The president last night presented highlights of the NDC’s manifesto. President Mahama talked of his government’s achievements and why he deserved a second term.

On the provident fund for aging artistes,Shouldn’t we rather be encouraging these artistes to be saving while they are in their prime by signing up to insurance schemes,life insurances  to ensure their future retirement rather than establishing a provident fund? While I am not against supporting the aged, these artistes must be responsible for the decisions they take. They must learn to save.

On education, the president promised one tablet per child, the question is how successful was the ‘one laptop per child’ which was implemented by government. Who is providing these services, is it going to be done by a local company? We need these answers. It is better to solve the problems we are presently confronted with rather than the new ones? What about the provision of teaching and learning materials?

We’ve talked about making technical and vocational education attractive, this has been talked about since time immemorial,and we keep talking about, a clearindication that all this while we’ve just not been ableto deliver on the promise

The president also stated his intention to build additional mental health facilities. Four years after the passage of the act, where is the mental health fund?  Where is the LI which will fully operationalize theMental Health Authority?

The creation of five additional regions translatesinto five more ministers.Do we need more regions? We need to strengthen the district Assemblies. We could create more and elect the Chief Executives. There have been  talks of  electing  MMDCE’s  except that there will be five persons whose name will be submittedto the Public Service Commission, the list then reduced to three and then stand for election.

I suggest each politicalparty present their candidate and have them voted for, this will reduce the stress on the MP’s and at the end of the day we know that we are moving forward with our democracy.

By Winston Amoah

The writer is the host of 3FM‘s Sunrise. Write-up was first broadcast on the station.

14th September 2016