The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Minority in Parliament of Ghana is making a case that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is manipulating data on the economy as well as the cases of COVID-19.

In their view, the impact of COVID-19 on economy has been most devastating – from massive job losses, closure of businesses to a historic fall in GDP growth, yet the government false picture to the public meanwhile the government is hiding the true state of the economy. 

The Minority leader Haruna Iddrisu at a press conference on Ghana’s worsening covid-19 situation and the national response yesterday, April 7, 2020 warned the government against such practices.

He said it only took the government to give the true state of the Ghanaian economy when it went to the IMF to borrow at a time the pandemic has hit the country.

Mr Iddrisu said instead of the Akufo-Addo government been proactive in devising measures to contain the virus, Vice President Dr Mahamadu Bawumia was rather busy engaging in an old-fashioned excessive partisan politics and infantile name calling.

Meanwhile, it was the time to focus every attention on this national crisis that threatens the very foundations of society.

Picking on the government, he added: “The latest update – a staggering 3,091 confirmed cases, the second highest in West Africa after Nigeria which has reported 3,145 cases though we should be more worried when we compare our population to that of Nigeria. This troubling development should serve as a wakeup call that the time for wishful thinking is over. …Government’s response so far has been rather slow, based on loose interpretations of the science, and often detached from the facts on the ground.”

The major challenge of COVID-19 is the data being presented, which raise doubts as many professionals have observed that the data being published by the Ghana Health Service does not lend to meaningful analysis in the form it is presented.

The absence of several key data, therefore, points to the fact that it would not allow independent researchers to understand the rate of spread and the demographics of the pandemic.

This he claimed, there have been two separate occasions in April that the number of confirmed cases under routine surveillance were revised downwards without any explanation whatsoever.

 “And the test positivity rate for travellers under mandatory quarantine literally doubled after the last update. No explanation was offered for that either. This lack of transparency only serves to undermine public trust in government’s commitment to this fight, and that directly affects our likelihood of successfully avoiding a worsening situation,” he added.

Hitherto the lack of empirical basis that the numbers of the infections are declining, an atmosphere of normalcy is being created to give a leeway to President Akufo-Addo to seek his re-election opportunity at the expense of the safety and life of Ghanaians.

He has vowed that Minority would demand accountability from the government on how funds allocated to the COVID-19 Trust Fund were utilised.

By Bernice Bessey