Press Release

NPP Central Region

July 11, 2012

PRESS CONFERENCE HELD BY NPP CENTRAL REGION ON THURSDAY JULY 05, 2012 AT THE REGIONAL PARTY OFFICE IN CAPE COAST AT 9:00AM

MILLS’‘ADZE WO FIE A, OYE’ FAILS TO WORK IN CENTRAL REGION

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen of the media. We have invited you here to let you know the lackadaisical manner with which the Atta Mills led-NDC government has addressed the development issues of the Central Region-the so-called home region of the President.

One would have thought that the region which was made to understand that ‘adze wo fie a, oye’ in the 2008 electioneering campaign would have witnessed unprecedented development projects under the Atta Mills’ presidency but the irony is that the level of disappointment in the home region of the president is an adequate chip of the disappointing national picture.

It will surprise you to know that our portion, as home region of the president, has been propaganda and absolute disappointment. There are a lot of issues that we will be addressing in subsequent encounters but for a start we wish to focus on the regional capital, Cape Coast, in this maiden interaction.

On the 17th of January, 2012, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Cape Coast, Anthony Agyir-Aikins, held a press conference and told the whole world that he went to China to sign a contract for the construction of the Cape Coast Market and therefore the people of Cape Coast were going to have modern market complex in 2012. Surprisingly, on the 28th of January, 2012, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cape Coast, Mr. Ebo Barton-Oduro, contradicted the MCE and said that there was nothing before parliament when a local radio station, Atlantic Fm, sought confirmation of the MCE’s statement, from the MP. A few weeks later, the NDC government was further exposed, when in March this year, the dysfunctional Director of Communications at the Presidency, Koku Anyidoho, in an interview to Hot Fm in Accra about the Cape Coast Market, said it was not a promise of the Mills-Mahama administration to build a market at Cape Coast, instead government intended to undertake renovation works. The question is who is telling the truth? The MCE, the MP or Koku Anyidoho?

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are at a loss as to why the Atta Mills-led NDC government has not put up a modern market for the people of Cape Coast since 2009 because the erstwhile NPP government in early January, 2009 bequeathed to the Atta Mills-NDC government a whopping US$ 155 million which was part of the US$ 750 million EUROBOND. Out of this US$ 155 million, US$ 4 million was meant for the Cape Coast Kotokoraba Market, US$ 4 million for the Mankessim Market and another US$ 4 million for the Bawjiase Market. We would like the NDC government to tell us why no modern market complex has sprung up in any of these areas within the Central Region since 2009 though money was made available by the Kufuor government in 2009. Or has the money been used to pay fishy, questionable judgment debts which is the topmost priority of this NDC government? It was our expectation that President Mills, in fulfilling his ethnicity-laced campaign of being an indigene of Central Region and Barton-Odro, campaigning on the platform that he was going to deliver Cape Coast out of bondage by ensuring more than fair share of development projects for the people of Cape Coast.

In the face of this obvious and tacit failure, all we could hear in May was that government was ready to build the market and started demolishing the Kotoka portion of the Kotokoraba Market. Before that, the women who were selling at the Kotoka Market were forced to relocate to places that were neither convenient nor suitable for market places for effective buying and selling activities. A typical example is the bushy area along the Kotokoraba by-pass road which used to serve as a place of convenience with all its attendant health implications to both traders and buyers. Others too have been compelled to relocate to wet marshy areas eg, the ungravelled Elmina Totro Station. It is really a pathetic scene when it rains. Some of the women are losing their sources of livelihood as a result of this forced, inhumane relocation of the Kotoka Market Women. How do these breadwinners feed their families and pay the high school fees of their wards under these harsh economic conditions visited on us by this incompetent Mills-Mahama NDC government?

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is important to note that the Mills-Mahama government promised to build the Cape Coast market in the 2009, 2010 and the 2011 budgets yet we have seen nothing so far except this deceptive political gimmick they are now engaged in. Also at the end of 2010, the President declared 2011 an action year and subsequently, Koku Anyidoho mentioned the construction of the Kotokuraba Market as one out of a lot of projects to be executed and yet nothing has happened till date. Why the haste to demolish the Kotoka Market in a rainy season? Was it an expert advice that such a ‘major’ construction project should kick-start in a rainy season?

The MCE for Cape Coast has also said categorically that a loan is being contracted from the China Exim Bank for the construction of the Cape Coast Kotokoraba Market and also the contractor for the project is the China Railway Construction Engineering Group. Surprisingly, there is nothing before the Parliament of Ghana on this loan for the Cape Coast Market.

It is the desire of the NPP that the people of Cape Coast get this market complex and we fully support any genuine effort to build the Market hence the NPP under President Kufuor made available money for this project in 2008. Nevertheless, it is important to alert the people of the Central Region and the rest of the country when such an important project has become a propaganda tool, when election 2012 is just around the corner.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is quite obvious that it has been a story of failure and broken promises under the Mills-Mahama presidency and it is in line with this that the good people of the Central Region have already made up their minds to usher in the New Patriotic Party on December 7, 2012 where Nana Addo as President and myself as the Member of Parliament for Cape Coast will offer a competent and able leadership to the good people of Ghana and Cape Coast respectively. Thank you for your attention.

Alfred Kojo Thompson
(Cape Coast Parliamentary Candidate)
Tel: 0244382650