Gov't has spent GH¢27bn on social interventions – Bawumia

The Akufo-Addo led government has so far spent GH¢27 billion on its major policy interventions, Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said.

Dr Bawumia disclosed this when he addressed a meeting with teachers and artisans at Mataheko in the Ablekuma Central municipality yesterday.

He named; the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO), free SHS, the restoration of nursing and teacher trainee allowances and free water and electricity supply, as some of the interventions that had taken up government’s expenditure.

The Vice-President, who began a four-day working tour of the Greater Accra Region yesterday, was accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey; a Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Anthony Abeifa Karbo; the Nasara Coordinator of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Aziz Haruna Futa, and some national and regional party executives.

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Dr Bawumia said whereas former President John Mahama could not pay the GH¢70 million training allowances for teachers and nurses, the NPP government was able to spend GH¢27 billion because it had built a solid economy from the weak one it inherited from the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

While calling on teachers to continue to support and give the government four more years to roll out more well-thought-through policies, he said the government had made education a major focus of its administration because the alternative of mass illiteracy would be more costly to the economy.

To that end, he said, the government cancelled utility bills for tertiary students and also increased scholarships by 70 per cent.

He hinted that the government also had plans to cushion private schools which were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.