Don’t trivialize citizens reaction to Ghana’s economic situation – Kwasi Prempeh

Wastefulness in government’s expenditure worrying, CDD

Government needs to be profligate luxurious spending

Ghana is not broke if we see V8’s on display, CDD

Executive Director of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh has charged government to desist from trivializing citizen’s cry over current economic hardships.

He added that government makes it look as though citizens are the only ones facing economic hardships.

“I don’t think you should trivialize people’s reaction to it [economic hardship]. The economic hardship is not just being felt by the government. I mean, the way the government is behaving, sometimes it is almost as if the government is the only one facing economic hardship. The people are facing economic hardship and at least the people are flesh and blood,” Prof. Prempeh

He further pointed out government’s reckless spending is depleting the limited resources in the country adding that although more revenue needs to be generated, government needs to cut down on spending.

“We need to raise more revenue but if the people also feel that ‘well, you’re not actually being judicious in your spending’, there’s a lot of profligacy in spending so, a lot of people cannot understand why a disproportionate amount of the money we earn in taxes, goes into payroll,” the CDD-Ghana boss said on Asaase Radio’s The Big Bulletin.

He added: “…I do think that people don’t like it when you say that ‘we’re broke and we don’t have enough money’ and yet they see things like 30 V8s and on one trip to the Upper East Region, we were in Techiman and we got off the road because of the sheer number of vehicles that were coming; we counted 35 V8s. When you turn around with that kind of a display of profligacy and you come and tell the people, ‘You’ll need to give us more money’; they will be like ‘ah, to feed this lifestyle?’