Executive Director of the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NOPRA), Bismarck Adongo Ayorogo has extolled the policy formulation prowess of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Bismarck Adongo said the NPP has, over the years, demonstrated supremacy over all other political parties, in designing policies that respond to the needs of the masses.
He cited the party government’s flagship initiatives such as the 1 Village, 1 Dam and the 1 District, 1 Factory as some of the transformational policies the party and its government formulated.
“If it comes to designing policies that are responsive or that can really address the needs of the people, if you bypass NPP, you’ll never get anyone. They know. They’ll tell you if you do this,” he stated.
“Take for instance the industrial infrastructure they are talking about which because they do love jargons and semantics, they call it 1 District, 1 Factory and all that but the main idea is that we need to build industries because after 60 years of self-determination of our priorities in development, we can’t continue to export raw materials.
We need to add value to it and the concept of industrialization will answer that question perfectly”
Mr. Bismarck Ayorogo said despite this excellent track record in policy formulation, the NPP and its government have failed to translate the ideas into reality but rather used them as conduit to swindle the country’s scarce resources.
Pointing to the poor implementation of the 1V1D and 1D1F, he argued that although the policies could have helped the country attain food sufficiency and achieve its industrialisation drive, government officials squandered the resources allocated for their implementation, resulting in poor execution of the projects.
“They will design the policy nicely but used the policy and robbed of us the resources. They have nice policies. But coming to the implementation, it’s like they will use the policies to convince us, take the money and share it among themselves”.
The 1V1D and 1D1F were some of the major policies the NPP and its then presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had pledged to implement should they be given the mandate.
After winning the 2016 Elections and assuming office in 2017, the policies were rolled out, but many have questioned the quality of implementation.
The irrigational dams constructed under the 1V1D, for instance, have been found to be unfit for purpose as they do not contain enough water to enable allyearround farming.
Although the government insists it has created numerous jobs through the implementation of the 1D1F, media investigation reveals some of the factories built under the policy have ground to a halt due to lack of funds or raw materials whiles others have been abandoned.
