According to Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, the aid component of the Sanitation and Water Resource Ministry’s budget which makes up more than half of its allocation, flies in the face of the President’s mantra of Ghana beyond aid.

[contextly_sidebar id=”hRVw9WdeP1XMP55MncKHmZxkdtxB04fR”]Similar concerns were raised about the budget of the Local Government Ministry.

Speaking before Parliament approved the GHc 183 million budget for the Ministry on Wednesday, Mr. Fuseini held the view that “the budget for this [Sanitation and Water Resource Ministry] is donor-driven and not domesticated [enough].”

President Nana Akufo-Addo’s mantra in recent times has been that Ghana, and Africa as a whole, can reach a point where they can thrive without having to rely on aid, which the Minority leader referenced when he voiced the Minority’s concerns.

“There is a new paradigm shift. In the budget for 2017 and 2018, the Minister of Finance happily shared a leaflet saying Ghana beyond aid. Let it not be words. Let it not be talk. Let it be marked by action, including adequate budgetary allocations for the purpose of achieving two important sustainable development goals.”

President Akufo-Addo, who currently serves as the co-Chair of the Group of Advocates of Eminent Persons of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, has conveyed the optimistic rhetoric that African countries can thrive without having to depend on aid and assistance from the west.

He has also charged African leaders to devise internal measures to address the problem within the continent without resorting to donor support.

In this light, the Minority Leader’s plea to the president was to lead by example.

“The President must walk the talk, and walk the talk such that the other countries will learn from the Ghana experience. To that extent, the Ministry deserves improved allocations,” Mr Idrissu said.

Embarrassing loan for toilets

Concerns with the foreign dependency to tackle sanitation issues were previously raised by the Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, who expressed his displeasure with $45.7 million loan facility from the International Development Bank to finance a sustainable rural water and sanitation project.

This project is to help expand access to, and ensure sustainability of water supply and sanitation services in rural and small-town communities in six regions of Ghana.

“60 years after independence, we still think that we have to borrow to build a toilet in communities. Mr. Speaker, It might be laughable, but I think that we need a change of mindset… when we go to our development partners to look for money, we must be looking for money to do more serious things and not building toilets,” the MP said in Parliament in November.

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By: Duke Mensah Opoku & Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Sanitation Ministry budget too donor-dependent – Minority appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

This was the case when the European Union (EU) donated vehicles, IT equipment and other items worth about GHc 2.3 million to help manage the country’s borders more effectively, under the EU-funded Ghana Integrated Migration Management Approach project

[contextly_sidebar id=”dkSfEzFXw5xOefvEdPamqyi55kloCI1C”]Even before the donors parted ways with the Ghana Immigration Service at the programme, the Comptroller General of Immigration Kwame Asuah Takyi was back to pleading, asking the EU for more help, with reference to Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

“The GIS is very grateful for the continuous support we receive from the European Union and its member countries. But like Oliver Twist, we shall be grateful for more, particularly in the development of our border infrastructure and systems,” Mr. Asuah Takyi said.

But this did not sit well with the EU Ambassador to Ghana, William Hanna, who had previously hailed President Nana Akufo-Addo’s vision of a Ghana not dependent on aid.

Mr. Hanna instead urged Ghanaian leaders to move away from the grovelling tone of Dickens’s Oliver Twist to the promise of Dickens’ Greater Expectations novel.

“I am thinking that in a country, where the President is talking about moving beyond aid, we should maybe move away from the Oliver twist references and reference Great Expectations, another book by Dickens,” the EU ambassador pointed out to the Comptroller General.

Mr. Hanna spoke of an oncoming summit in Abidjan for European Leaders and African leader to debate the question of youth and job creation.

“… we hear that the new government is putting a lot of emphasis in creating jobs and that will address the root causes of migration. So let’s perhaps have great expectations of what we can do together,” he said.

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By: Caleb Kudah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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