NDC Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has claimed that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo spent a whopping GHS 2.8 million on his recent travels to France and Johannesburg.
The North Tongu MP alleges that the country spent so much on the foreign trip because the President chose to fly a rented private jet instead of using the Falcon 900 EX Presidential Jet.
Mr Ablakwa accused President Akufo-Addo of blowing the money ‘to satisfy his insatiable appetite and comfort at the expense of the suffering masses’.
He lamented in a Facebook post that ‘The Airbus ACJ320neo owned by Acropolis Aviation based in Farnborough, UK and registered as G-KELT, is the most luxurious and the most expensive in the Acropolis fleet. The manufacturers describe it as ‘the most outstanding ambassador for Airbus Corporate Jets’. It costs the Ghanaian taxpayer approximately £15,000 an hour when President Akufo-Addo rents it’.
‘Let’s further analyze President Akufo-Addo’s latest trip to Europe: per Flightradar24, the G-KELT aircraft left Accra with the President to Paris on the 16th of May — a 6 and half hour duration. Airlifted the President from Paris to Johannesburg for 11 hours on the 23rd of May.’
‘Then Johannesburg to Accra on the 25th of May was a five and half hour flight. This gives us accumulated flight travel of 23 hours; so at £15,000 an hour, it thus cost us a colossal £345,000. At the current exchange rate, that is a staggering GHS2,828,432.80’, the legislator posted.
He argued ‘Let us imagine what GHS2.8million could do for our country, particularly considering the mess in multiple sectors which has led to legitimate #FixTheCountryNow agitations by the youth.
Mr Ablakwa has considered pushing Parliament to probe the ‘wasteful expenditure’ on the President’s latest nine day tour to France, Belgium and South Africa which commenced on Sunday, May 16, 2021.
‘I have therefore filed an urgent question in Parliament to compel the Akufo-Addo administration to be accountable to the Ghanaian people on this matter and ultimately to prick their conscience to end this obscene profligacy at this time of considerable economic hardships.
The African people deserve better from their leaders’, he concluded.
The essence of President Akufo-Addo’s working visit to the three countries was ‘to re-engage with the rest of the world, following the onset of the [COIVD 19] pandemic, and highlight Ghana, once again, as a country with an impressive business-friendly atmosphere, with bright economic prospects for the future’.
This is the second time the Minority have cautioned government on the rising foreign travels expenditure.
Akufo-Addo’s foreign trips and hotel bills swallowed a total of GHS 70 million in the last nine months of 2019, according to news reports.
Kasatintin.com can not tell if these figures are true or mere propaganda by the opposition NDC to smear the ruling government.
Whatever it is, the truth shall surely come out one day. Whoever lied to us or chopped the state’s money ‘yanfuyanfu’ shall have running stomach!
SOURCE: Kasatintin.com
