Some major political parties in the country have described government`s performance in 2014, as “disappointing.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”JESCqDLOO5LIe5t0n1vPwz8XDG5cvCa4″]According to the Convention People`s Party (CPP) and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), government failed to tackle a number of issues that confronted the country in the year, including the power crisis, depreciation of the cedi; corruption issues among others, hence their assessment.
The rate at which general prices of goods, foods and services change, hit a four year record high of 17% in November.
According to the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF), 2014 was a difficult year which saw many companies either sacked employees while others folded up because they could not survive the brunt of the economic down turn.
The Cedi saw more than 30% depreciation against the major trading currencies, high interest rates, high cost of utility tariffs, the introduction of new taxes among others.
The Political parites have however urged government to tackle some of those pressing issues that got out of hand in 2015.
The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) wants government to use the nation`s natural resources to implement the free Senior High School (SHS) policy in 2015.
PPP’s National Secretary, Kofi Asamoah-Siaw told Citi News that “we have abundant deposit of natural resources, there is gold, diamond, there is now oil, cocoa and so on.”
He said “government needs to fund compulsory universal education from kindergarten to SHS using our natural resources and that is the only way that the natural resources will be distributed equitably and that is when we will know that government means well in transforming this country.”
The Convention People`s Party (CPP) also called for a reduction in the prices of petroleum products in 2015.
Deputy Communications Director of the CPP, Ernesto Yeboah in interview with Citi News said, “it is public knowledge that the Mahama administration this year has been very disappointing. We hope that 2015 would be different.”
He insisted that: “immediately, what we want to see is a reduction in fuel prices. We also want to see an improvement in the power distribution and a cut down of ‘dumsor dumsor’.”
He added that in the long term, “we expect that the [Tema Oil refinery] TOR will begin to work again and begin to refine crude even if not the one from the Jubilee oil field. We expect that such a national asset should not be lying idle like we saw throughout 2014.”
Mr Yeboah further called for the creation of more jobs in 2015.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana