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Government is alleged to have used funds raised to fight the COVID-19 pandemic to sponsor New Patriotic Party (NPP) Parliamentary candidates during the 2020 general elections.
The COVID cash, which included funds from the COVID-19 Alleviation Fund, contributions from various institutions, individuals and groups and the millions of loans, was not used for the intended purposes.
This is the reason why though there is an escalation in the spread of the coronavirus, and yet the government has failed to present any strategy to combat it because the money is gone.
Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Murtala Mohammed Ibrahim, made the allegation on Alhaji and Alhaji on Radio Gold on Saturday.
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He said, “We know that during the 2020 general election monies meant for fighting COVID were given to NPP Parliamentary candidates to use to campaign around this country.”
“Monies that were supposed to.., the COVID Alleviation Fund, very clearly were monies used to distribute to people to vote for the NPP and Tamale Central was a classical example.”
“If they think that they never used those monies for campaign they should come out and account,” he challenged the government.
Hon. Murtala Mohammed disclosed that the Tamale Central 2020 NPP Parliamentary candidate visited Tamale, gathered people and distributed thousands of cedis for these constituents to vote for the ruling party’s candidates.
According to him, because the COVID cash has been used elsewhere all the measures put in place in 2020 to fight the disease have been abandoned.
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He noted that contract tracing and testing is the only means to determine the number of affected people and yet this important exercise has been abandoned because the government has failed to pay contact tracers.
“We live in a country that went for several millions of loans, went in to get US$1 billion from the IMF using COVID-19; went to the World Bank for about US$150 million.”
“We had other international organizations and institutions, philanthropists and businesses in this country that also financially supported with millions of cedis just to see how best we could collectively galvanize forces as a people to overcome this disease.”
“All these donations and contractual loans were done in the name of COVID and yet government cannot say for certain how much has been spent,” he stated.
The MP indicated that about GH¢17 billion is alleged to have been used to fight COVID-19 and yet the government cannot give the breakdown of the expenditure.
President Nana Akufo-Addo, he said, owes a responsibility to the state to account for the expenditure of these monies to the Ghanaian people who gave him the mandate.
“Such accountability is needed,” he stated.
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FrontPageGhana.com/Ghana
