The Founder and Leader of the United Renaissance Party (URP), Mr. Kofi Wayo, has said that if his party was given the nod in the 2008 General Election to rule the country, it would take it just two years to solve half of the nation's problems to save the people of Ghana from economic slavery.

According to Mr. Kofi Wayo, the country has all it takes to solve its numerous problems, but due to mismanagement, it cannot extract anything meaningful from its rich resources to benefit its citizens.

"The rich natural resources in the country can be properly utilized to benefit the people economically and alleviate the suffering and poverty among the citizenry. But what do we see, poverty, suffering and stress are all over the streets breeding anti-social vices like armed robbery, school drop-outs, wee and cocaine smoking, teenage pregnancies and poor salary structure for workers".

In an interview with newsmen at Senya Bereku, Mr. Kofi Wayo noted that if his party got the nod to rule the country which he said was highly possible, he would change the fortunes of the people. He explained that there were vast stretches of land all over the country that could properly be put into good use to bring the needed income to the country for its development.

Wayo further stated that his government would use the media houses to carry out the orientation and sensitization process for the success of the intended programme.

He then took a swipe at African Heads of State and owners of media houses in the African continent for their refusal to pay journalists, realistic wages so that they would do their best to assist the governments in their orientation drives.

"Because journalists are not paid well on this continent and especially in Ghana, they have resorted to sing the song of their high bidder instead of fighting for the welfare of the poor majority”, Kofi Wayo charged.

He said in view of the poor remuneration for journalists, whoever pays much higher amount to a journalist has the upper hand in putting his personal view across instead of the views of the people.

"Most politicians in Africa and Ghana in particular have taken advantage of the poor salary structure of the Ghanaian journalist and are using them unduly" he pointed out.

He said Journalists working in Ghana now are called 'stress men and women’ and not pressmen or women because they work under stress 24 hours.

According to him, in such situations, the media which should be the watchdog of the society are compelled to seek their daily bread "instead of following the truth.

On the current energy crisis, Mr. Kofi Wayo, claimed that his government will first of all fire all the senior officials of the Volta River Authority(VRA) for inefficiency and incompetence.


Source: The Independent