THE MINORITY in Parliament are claiming the government did not put in place ‘a comprehensive strategic plan’ to deal with the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), and said the response has been slow so far.
They have, therefore, asserted that those handling the Covid-19 situation are employing ‘loose interpretations of the science, and often detached from the facts on the ground’.
“We lost the opportunity to do all of these and many more because President Akufo-Addo did not prioritize. He was touring in Europe even though the alarm bells of the coming pandemic were ringing. Then shortly upon his return, we had the first two cases of the virus infection. One of them had actually been with the President during his ‘happy’ travel to Europe,” Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu stated during a news conference in Parliament House in Accra yesterday.
Haruna Iddrisu said the sharp rise in the number of cases reported by authorities in the past two weeks was deeply worrying.
The NDC MPs claimed the government did not lock down the country and close its borders early, even though they were the same political grouping that protested when the President tried to rush a restrictions bill to Parliament under a certificate of urgency as part of the measures to deal with the Covid-19.
Some of their leaders, including MPs, said cynically that the President was trying to set his party’s election rigging plan in motion ahead of the December general election with a lockdown of the country.
According to the NDC MPs, the attempt to downplay the facts on the virus is unacceptable and added that Ghanaians expected the professionals entrusted with responsibility for managing the crisis to be forthright and refrain from interpreting data that is not grounded in the science of the pandemic.
“And here, I refer to a recent statement by a member of the National Response Team that we have peaked in terms of the number of infected persons,” he noted, adding “it appears to be part of a strategy to create an atmosphere of normalcy in the lead to the next presidential broadcast and as for the reason, your guess is as good as mine. Evidently, President Akufo-Addo seems more interested in his re-election than in the safety and life of Ghanaians.”
For the NDC MPs, the government failed to recognize the seriousness of the threat and left the country’s borders open even at the time it refused to evacuate Ghanaians students in Wuhan, China.
“Government failed to anticipate the devastating effects that a Covid-19 outbreak would have on our social life and our economy, and were grossly unprepared to soften the blow for the most vulnerable people and households in our nation when a lockdown became necessary. The inept, partisan and disastrous manner government distributed food relief only exacerbated the risk,” Haruna Iddrisu stated.
“And to conceal that failure to shirk responsibility for its consequences, they prematurely lifted the restrictions on movement against the advice of some of the most respected authorities on public health in Ghana,” they added.
The NDC MPs ended the news conference without making any alternative suggestion because they claimed their leader, ex-President Mahama, had been making suggestions to fight the pandemic.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House