Bawumia now prefers to be a ‘joker’ than halting depreciating Cedi – Felix Kwakye Ofosu

Felix Kwakye Ofosu, an aide to former President John Dramani Mahama, has taken a swipe at Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia over the continuous depreciation of the Ghana Cedi.

The Cedi in recent times has experienced a free fall compared to major trading currencies such as the US dollar with the Bank

Read full articleof Ghana introducing stringent measures to contain the depreciation.

Citing an image of exchange rates in a Facebook post, Mr. Kwakye Ofosu said the Vice President has reneged on his responsibility as head of the Economic Management Team and rather turned into a joker making comparisons between the Ghana Card and interchanges.

He described the current situation as a ‘mess’.

“Instead of turning attention to the decline in the value of the cedi and halting same, the supposed Head of the Economic Management Team prefers to be a jester at prime time, weaving outlandish, comical yarns about cards and interchanges. What a mess,” he posted on his Facebook timeline.

Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia while launching two new high-level information technology programmes at the Accra Business School touted the benefits of the Ghana Card.

He stated that he will choose the national identification card over a thousand interchanges.

“Some of the problems go back to independence. We inherited a problem of no unique national identification system. This has been with us since independence. We had implemented a national identification system for the Ghana Card.

"Today, we have 16 million Ghanaians with unique identities, and that is a major transformation. A lot of people sometimes do not appreciate its impact.

“If you gave me 1000 interchanges and the Ghana Card, I would choose the Ghana Card because it has more impact,” Dr Mahamudu Bawumia said.

The comment caused several social media users particularly on Twitter to make a joke out of it.

But addressing participants at the Civil Service Awards ceremony on Friday, July 29, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia revisited his "I'll choose Ghana card over 1,000 interchanges" comments and tried to explain further.

“It seems my Ghana card statement was misinterpreted. I want people to think about it critically. For the first time in our history, we have a unique identity system which is biometric and so we can uniquely identify every individual whether they are alive or dead.

“With this, the case of ghost names on our public sector system will become a thing of the past...at National Service Scheme we found 14,000 ghost workers saving annually 114 million Ghana cedis just from one institution because we look for unique identity. Just a couple of days ago SSNIT reported finding 27,000 ghost pensioners and they were being paid 327 million cedis a year,” he said