Sunday, October 26, 2008

WE DON'T ENVISION POWER SHARING — MILLS (PAGE 14)

THE National Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, Prof. John Evans Atta Mills, has discounted reports that the NDC sent people to Kenya to study power sharing.
Describing it as one of the negative tactics of the NPP, Prof Mills said, "We don't anticipate anything like power sharing but a good win in the elections".
He was addressing members of the Tertiary Institutions Network (TEIN) of the NDC at the Kumasi Campus of the University of Education Winneba last Thursday night as part of his one-week tour of the Ashanti Region.
The auditorium of the university where the event took place was packed to capacity with many others struggling to watch the event from outside through the windows.
He said under his presidency, the government would build a modern office complex for the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) to reward the union for the support it gave to the NDC government in introducing the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GET Fund).
He said at that time the NPP, then in opposition, was organising walkouts in Parliament and castigating the NDC government for daring to introduce the GETFund, the NUGS saw wisdom in the fund and
wholeheartedly gave its support to the government.
"Quite strangely, the NPP who kicked against the fund are now claiming ownership of it and have even gone ahead to abuse it", Prof Mills said.
Prof. Mills gave the assurance that under his presidency, the GETFund would be decentralised to ensure effective implementation.
The presidential candidate further stated that a government of the NDC would use part of the fund to supplement the Students Loan Scheme.
He said the NPP government had no respect for teachers, and had therefore failed to improve their service conditions, especially in the area of study leave.
"I have been a teacher for the greater part of my working life and I know what teachers need", he said.
Prof Mills said teachers would be paid professional allowance in an NDC government.
A national teachers' council would also be instituted to work towards getting better conditions for teachers.
He expressed concern about the alarming rate of graduate unemployment in the country, and accused the NPP government of failing to implement policies and programmes to address the challenge.
That is why he had vowed to place emphasis on the training and retraining of graduates, and also support them with start up capital to set up their own businesses.
Prof Mills dismissed suggestions that he supervised the collapse of the Ghanaian economy when he was the chairman of the government's Economic Management Team.
He emphasised that under his chairmanship, Ghana achieved single-digit inflation until unfavourable global economic developments begun to have a toll on the Ghanaian economy in the latter part of the NDC administration.
ls said the NPP was deceiving Ghanaians that it had improved the economy, when in reality inflation was in double figures.

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