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I'll
retain law on willfully causing financial law to the state –
Jake
Accra, Oct. 24, GNA – Contrary to the call by general
secretaries of the four leading political parties for the
law on wilfully causing financial loss to the state to be
repealed, Mr Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, one of the 19
presidential aspirants of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), on
Wednesday said he would retain it when given the chance to
be president in 2009.
“Until we are able to find a better way to check official
corruption in this country, we must keep and work with that
law. Moreover, we need to understand that what is sauce for
the goose is sauce for the gander,” he said.
Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey made the statement at the launch of his
Economic Manifesto entitled; “Beyond Positive Change –
Cooking a Bigger Pot of Soup for Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”
He said corruption was both need and greed driven, adding
that his economic plan would, among other things, deal with
need driven corruption by providing high paying jobs for the
youth, and the law would then deal with greed driven
corruption.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey noted that the greatest challenge that
faced Ghana was youth unemployment saying that this year
alone, 310,000 young persons would be passing out of various
schools to look for jobs that were not available.
He said the NPP presidential race was not a popularity
franchise but about the contest of ideas on how to fix the
real economic challenges of the country, especially, that of
how to find high paying jobs for the teaming young persons
passing out of school.
“My fear is that if we do not address this youth
unemployment challenge, we would be heading for disaster in
the next few years because the devil would always find a job
for the idle hands of our youth.”
He said his economic strategy for resolving the youth
employment challenge included building the economy on the
pillars of tourism, information and communication
technology, agro processing and the establishment of Ghana
as a service centre for the sub-region.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey contended that those four key areas
constituted the highest job generating sectors, saying that
tourism, for instance, promised to generate almost 200,000
jobs every year when properly developed and the other areas
promised even higher job generation.
He said the plan was to take Ghana from subsidizing utility
tariffs to suit the generally low income group in the
country to the point of paying better incomes that would
enable people to afford tariffs pegged at commercial rates.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey noted that some of the sectors that
informed the five to six per cent GDP growth rate were not
necessarily job generating sectors, saying that accounted
for why the country recorded favourable macro-economic
indicators and yet the people complained that they did not
feel the growth in their pockets.
“I will fix the economy and create jobs to ensure that the
macro-economic growth would have real social impact on the
living standards of the people,” he said.
Touching on brain drain, he said it was unfortunate that
while the country’s tourism drive was making strides,
professionals kept migrating to the west to seek greener
pasture.
He noted that instead of trying to prevent people from going
abroad to work, a Jake-led government would rather institute
a system that would enable those professionals to find jobs
commensurate with their profession and rank abroad to ensure
that they gained better experience and returned home to help
develop the country.
Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey also stated his vision for the energy
sector saying that he would focus on generating enough
energy to serve some of the landlocked countries in the
sub-region instead of just focusing on Ghana alone.
“The rationale for that strategy is that even if we are not
able to have enough for all the countries we target, we
would at least have more than enough for ourselves. It is
better to raise the bar higher than to set easily achievable
targets,” he said.
He said he was privileged to have worked in President
Kufuor’s government, adding that the Kufuor Administration
had set the tone for the next phase of Ghana’s development
and he was the right person to deliver real social benefits.
GNA
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