The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference has condemned Parliament for importing furniture from China to furnish the chamber of the Ghanaian legislature.
They remarked that the importation of the furniture was occurring at a time when there are no “aggressive efforts to set up more industries to take care of rising youth unemployment and low levels of development.”
“We join our voices to those of the many Ghanaians who disapprove of the importation of furniture from China for our Parliament when made-in-Ghana furniture could have been patronized to boost the furniture industry and the economy as a whole,” it said.
[contextly_sidebar id=”pIKbtyEYiDew5tPO4CdrxIGFU4K84RTO”]This was made known in a Communiqué issued by the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference at the end of the 2014 plenary Assembly in Accra.
It was on the theme: The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization.”
The Communiqué touched on family life, issues of corruption in the society, reproductive health of the youth, the Ghanaian economy, among others.
Under the section which addressed Ghana’s Economy and the Family, the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference noted that the inexcusable action of Parliament only goes to “impact negatively on most families, leading to despair, poverty, sense of abandonment and marginalization.”
“They threaten the stability of families making it difficult for them to actually live out their expectations as Christian families,” they added.
Buy and sell economy
They also complained bitterly about the state of the nation’s economy saying, “we bemoan the nature of fact that Ghana’s economy is fast becoming one of ‘buying and selling’.”
According to them, there is consistent high cost of living, hyper-inflation, a depreciating cedi, high cost of goods and services and unbearably high taxes, causing many nascent private businesses to fold up.
They however acknowledge the various efforts of government, aimed at improving the economy, including the ongoing discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and the Senchi Consensus.
They were hopeful that these interventions will lead to economic transformation that will “arrest the rising spate of youth unemployment and low levels of development.”
“We pray that our own home-grown economic policies such as those implemented under the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Authority (GYEEDA) and the Youth Enterprise Support (YES) may be led by qualified and competent persons.
“These policies should be given the utmost priority over externally-funded support programmes. Our experience is that externally-funded economic interventions almost always lead to unbearable consequences on citizens.”
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @osamidan