By Adiza Bawa
The MP for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has expressed dissatisfaction on how funds are allocated to the President’s travels.
According to him, that money could have been used to pay the Nations Builders Corps(NABCO) who demonstrated during the peaceful “yentua demonstration” about the arrears due them.
The MP alleged that the President used a total of GHC4.9 billion in his 10-day-tour.
He said he found out about the President’s spending by calling up big companies the President visited.
“I pose like a businessman and call up these companies, sometimes if I want to chatter (LSDI’s) I send them emails and they give me figures because they are in business”.
The MP said, during an interview on the GTV Breakfast show that the money for the lavish travels could have been used to pay 7,000 Nabco trainees.
”The NABCO trainees who were demonstrating, we paid them GHC700. That GHC4.9 million can pay 7,000 of them for a month”, he said.
The MP insists that throughout Former President Kufour’s tenure, he never chartered an aircraft, he flew commercial first-class. He said if President Akufo Addo doesn’t want to travel in the jet, there are other options like travelling in first class, like how other Presidents do, citing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent commercial flight posted to facebook.
The North Tongu MP insists Ghana has a functioning Presidential Jet and refuted claims that the Jet is not comfortable.
He said other country’s Presidents have applied to use Ghana’s Private Jet, and had no issues with it, referencing the Liberian President, Guinean President and the Sierra Leonean President as officials who have used the Presidential Jet in question.
“People should stop this business, if the presidential jet is not fit for purpose, the presidential jet is not comfortable, the presidential jet is not spacious, you can’t stretch a leg, you can’t relax”.
“President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo should use Ghana’s Presidential jet, there is nothing wrong with it”, he noted.
The Member of Parliament for North Tongu has gone into the Parliamentary Hansards for the year 2000 when the President was a Lawmaker and brought out his vehement opposition to the purchase of a Presidential Jet by the then government of the Late President Jerry John Rawlings.
He asked, “ Why charter an expensive jet when the economy is in distress?”.
According to Mr. Ablakwa, the government should focus on finding a solution to the economic difficulties Ghanaians are going through, citing examples from the US, France and other countries of how their Presidential Jets have remained in service to Presidents, after Presidents.
“We were told that the Presidential Jet has a lifespan of twenty years. So 2010 when the aircraft arrived plus twenty years that gives you from now to 2030. Now we all know with this aircraft if your maintenance regime is very good, if you take good care of it, that minimum twenty years, you can even double it. Our Ghana Airforce, the communication squadron, which is in charge of Presidential jets is celebrated world over for their high maintenance culture, we love to know that”, he noted.
Last year, Mr. Ablakwa stirred controversy when he alleged that President Akufo-Addo hired a Private Jet at the cost of GH¢2.8 million on his travels to France, Belgium, and South Africa at the expense of tax burdened Ghanaians.
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