The Trade and Industry Minister-designate, Kobina Tahir Hammond simply known as KT Hammond has shocked some members of the Appointment Committee of Parliament when he maintained his stand that leaving the affairs of Ghana in the hands of young people alone with the older generation being relegated to the background completely will be a suicidal thing to do.
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Adansi-Asokwa constituency in the Ashanti Region strongly believes that a combination of both the young and older generations remains the ideal thing where the latter mentors the former with rich experiences to push the development agenda of the country.
Mr. Hammond said these when he appeared before Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Monday, February 20 as he defended his controversial comment that the youth do not have what it takes to govern Ghana without the assistance of the older generation.
He expressed unhappiness about the rate at which Ghana imports some of the most basic of goods, saying that the trend is worrying and has the propensity to further derail local production by indigenes.
According to him, this development if curbed could help shore up the country’s economy in these trying times.
“We are importing guts, bladders, stomach of animals to Ghana to complement our foods. And that alone totalled about $164,575,000. I thought this is a little bit of a scandal,” he said.
He was being vetted after his nomination by President Akufo-Addo as Minister for Trade and Industry-designate.
Mr Hammond was of the view that “these importations have terrible effects on our foreign exchange reserves. I think it’s about time we took a serious look at this particular issue. I’m told a committee was put up by cabinet to deal specifically with this matter.”
He was particularly unimpressed that products such as tripe were among the things that found their way into the country.
By Vincent Kubi