The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has defended measures pursued by the government in the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He argued that the science might be the measures make no difference today but nobody can ascribe criminality or reckless spending to the decision to undertake the measures.
The President pointed out that economic consequences from the pandemic have been devastating and argued it is precisely because the economic fallout from the pandemic is so widespread and long lasting that it is important to show clearly the COVID funds were not misused.
“It is critical that we do not lose the confidence of the people that a crisis that they were led to believe we were all in together was abused for personal gain,” he stated.
Delivering his 7th Message on the State of the Nation on Wednesday 8th March, 2023 the President stated it was government that asked for the COVID funds to be audited and I can assure this House that nothing dishonourable was done with the COVID funds.
According to him, the responses from the Minister of Health and Finance on January 23 and 25, 2023 have sufficiently laid to rest the queries from the Auditor General’s report and I believe and objective scrutiny of these statements from the Health and Finance Ministries would justify this conclusion.
An audit into the COVID expenditure highlighted irregularities in the management of some tranches of the funds that included the payment of unapproved risk allowance at the ministry of information.
Senior management staff and other supporting staff of the ministry reportedly paid themselves a total amount of GH¢151,500.00 as COVID-19 risk allowance for coming to work during the lockdown period.
According to the report, the authorities also failed to take delivery of some COVID-19 jabs for which the Ministry of Health paid an amount of US$120,192,379.80 to UNICEF/AVAT for the supply of vaccines among many other infractions.
President Akufo-Addo indicated that government provided GH¢518 million of grants and loans to micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs) through the NBSSI, now the Ghana Enterprise Agency, in which 302,515 enterprises benefitted, of which 60% were women-owned.
“These were MSMEs that were in distress as a result of the pandemic. For some traders, the receipt of GH¢1,000 made the difference between the ruin of the household and survival.”
“In addition, 58,041 health workers were employed to supplement the existing health sector workforce. Subsequently, all of them have been absorbed as permanent workers in the health sector. Frontline health workers were also granted 50% tax relief for the period.”
“Was that something to regret? We should be forever grateful for the work that so many people did to keep all of us safe.”
“All households enjoyed free water supply and huge discounts on electricity bills, because access to water was a necessity to ensure people adhered to hygiene practices, and access to electricity was important as everybody was encouraged to stay at home. It also provided an economic cushion to protect lives and livelihoods at a time of difficulty. Today, the government support for utility bills is being projected by some as a waste or to use that word, so beloved of some commentators, profligate.”
Government, he said, took a deliberate decision to try and keep the inevitable disruptions across all lives down to a minimum in the education sector, by opening schools and education institutions as soon as it was made safe to do so.
“But faced with the prospect of a whole generation of our children losing irreplaceable years of education, and the real likelihood of many of them dropping out of school forever, we took the brave decision to open the institutions.”
“After the event, some might be tempted to forget the volumes of sanitizer and other logistics it took to keep the schools open and safe, in much the same way as some might now choose to forget the vitriol that came from some who should have known better, threatening hell and damnation when, according to them, the children start dying in the schools. Mercifully, we did not lose a single child to COVID in school.”
The President insisted no auditor can put a figure on the cost of keeping the children in school safely during the crisis not the continuing cost of the effect of the pandemic on young people; not the financial cost and the emotional cast.
“And certainly not the social cost. But we must thank the Almighty that we have survived to repair the damage and begin to rebuild our economy,” the President said.