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The Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has called for a halt in the construction of the controversial National Cathedral.
Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh opined that the project is inexpedient considering the time it is being undertaken.
Speaking during a roundtable discussion hosted by the Citizen’s Coalition on December 15, he said the crisis the country has been plunged into should be influencing enough to direct the resources into more desirable areas of the economy.
“This is not the time for vanity projects, but we have preserved a vanity project in the form of the cathedral,” he said.
“I was expecting that this being a crisis period, we will reflect on that decision and say even if this is sensible to do at all, and I do not think so, that it will not be the appropriate period or we will change the idea to something else,” the Executive Director added.
Commenting on the 2023 budget delivered in Parliament on November 26, 2022 by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, he alleged that the government focused more on receiving grants from the International Monetary Fund than structuring the budget to alleviate Ghanaians from the dire effects of the hardship.
“You may perform extraordinary deeds when you’re in a crisis. Nothing in the budget, in my opinion, suggests that there is a crisis or that this is being done urgently, said Professor Prempeh.
“So generally it is a missed opportunity in terms of seeing this as a crisis moment and seeing it as a moment to reset the button, I think we have not quite done that.
“It looks to me that it is purely an emergency thing targeted at the IMF to approve a loan as opposed to something that is going deep into the structure and our governance.”
