<<Print>>

A policy analyst of the People�s National Convention (PNC), Atik Mohamed, has described any move by government to stop subsidizing petroleum products and shift the entire burden onto the consumer as disturbing. He said, after accusing the New Patriotic Party(NPP) of being insensitive to the plight of the ordinary Ghanaian, scoring cheap political points with the issue of fuel and any other thing they could think of; it is worrying that the National Democratic Congress (NDC), would be the Party to talk of doing away with subsidies. According to Atik Mohammed, he is not surprised because this underlines the hypocritical nature of the NDC. Touching on the issue of the President's relocation to the Flagstaff House as the seat of government, the PNC Policy Analyst slammed the NDC for accusing the NPP of being apathetic to Ghanaians' hardship wondering why the NPP could build a new seat of Government with all that money. �But when they came, the late Professor Mills said he would not go and live there, yet he would receive dignitaries in that building�and the climax of the hypocrisy was the decision of the President (Mahama) to move in there. �They accused the NPP that all the intervention programs they brought were collapsing and were serving no purpose, yet they could not introduce one. What they did was, they duplicated the existing modules and continued with them,� he claimed. The Policy Analyst of the PNC stated that, in a developing country like Ghana, the full cost of petroleum products cannot be passed onto the consumer because subsidies were required for economic growth. He was of the view that, the purchasing power is in the hands of a few, thus the removal of subsidies which was supposed to be a social investment policy, would anchor the low class of the population to their position as far as the social ladder is concerned. �Majority of Ghanaians who are in the bottom of the social ladder do not have cars and therefore board �trotro�. So if subsidies are removed, fares would go high, with the cost of production and transportation factored into pricing,� he opined.