US-based medical practitioner and former presidential aspirant of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Arthur Kennedy, has expressed that judgment debt will be one of the major scandals that will rock the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) government if it leaves office.
Dr. Kennedy expressed concern with the practice of abandoning projects, particularly, public housing projects, whenever there is a change of government, which he intimated is of great concern because it is one of the ways Ghana loses money.
He told Selorm Adonoo on The Big Issue on Channel One TV that there have always been major public housing projects since President Jerry John Rawlings’ tenure that never get completed.
He indicated that the NPP government would not be any different from the previous governments and would certainly leave with one of Ghana’s biggest judgment debt scandals.
“If indeed Article 35(7) [of the 1992 Constitution] says that as far as practicable, governments should continue projects and programmes initiated by previous governments and if a government is not doing that, what records do the people have? Since Rawlings, almost every government has commenced a big public housing project and they do it up to about 80 percent they leave office and the new government go to look for money and starts their own project then they abandon it and this can cause financial loss to the state.
“I have reason to believe that, when this government leaves that doesn’t mean that that is just the sin of the NPP. I think that judgment debt might be one of the biggest scandals and most judgment debts come from the fact that projects initiated by previous governments are abandoned whenever there is a new government.
