Beyond expanding the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and initiating and implementing the Progressively Free SHS, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government also introduced other social intervention programmes such as free school uniforms, free school sandals, free textbooks, free cocoa fertiliser, free cocoa seedlings as well as payment of premium to cocoa farmers while increasing the producer price of cocoa, former Minister of Communication, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah has said.

Apart from that, the NDC also introduced free Ayalolo bus rides for indigents and students and also rejuvenated the State Transport Corporation and provided funds to SMEs.

Dr. Omane Boamah said this in response to Vice-President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia challenge to the NDC to name any social intervention programmes it introduced to mitigate the effects of any difficulties that affected Ghanaians when they were in power.

“We have done tangible things to reduce the hardships on Ghanaians. We can point to them”, Dr Bawumia said at the 2018 joint Annual Dinner and Dance of the United Kingdom branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Young Executives Forum (YEF) on Saturday, 20 October 2018 adding: “Today, the NDC is going around saying that there are hardships. So what we want to ask them, and I want to challenge them, a simple challenge: tell us what you have done in your last eight years of government. Tell us the social interventions you brought in to reduce the hardships of Ghanaians.”

Dr. Boamah, in a statement, said aside from the list of interventions aforementioned, the NDC also deemed social infrastructure as critical to the overall well-being of Ghanaians and, therefore, constructed several hospitals, polyclinics and CHPS compounds across the country.

Dr Boamah noted that Ghanaians expect the NPP government to work assiduously to, at least, maintain or improve upon the NDC’s record, given the strong foundation provided by the Atta Mills and Mahama administrations.

Below is Dr. Edward Omane Boamah’s full response to Dr. Bawumia: