The Vice President has questioned the sincerity of former President John Mahama who recently blamed government for the job losses created by the revocation of licenses of many indigenous financial institutions.  In a Facebook live interaction session last week the NDC flagbearer said such a development poses a national security threat. But Dr Mahamudu Bawumia delivering a speech at the launch of the UNOPS housing project initiative in Accra rejected the claims.  He stated that “Government’s financial interventions in the cleanup exercise were necessary to help mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the failure of the relevant financial institutions.”  According to him, government is determined to recover these funds from persons whose actions led to these mass failures.  The Vice President said government’s actions have restored confidence in the banking system as customers of the defunct deposit-taking institutions continue to access their funds without difficulty.  “Through government’s interventions, deposits held by some 4,629,029 depositors have been saved, as well as over 3,000 jobs saved. To minimize job losses, CBG and GCB retained thousands of former employees of the failed institutions. Unpaid salaries of some failed banks have also been paid by the Receivers. “Can you imagine what would have happened in this country if 4.6 million depositors had lost their savings? This is over seven times all the workers employed by government! That would have been a real national security threat,” he said. He also questioned Mr Mahama’s concerns for indigenous firms. “But where from John Mahama’s newfound care for indigenous firms? Does John Mahama know how many indigenous firms collapsed under four years of dumsor? Why didn’t his government bail them out? Why this sudden love for collapsing indigenous firms?  “Where were the specific policies to support them? Does he know how many jobs were lost? What did he do about that if he cared so much about jobs? Today he is opportunistically crying about job losses because he wants votes,” Dr Bawumia jabbed. According to the Vice President, the real threat was Mr Mahama letting many nurses and teachers who have completed training but were home for four years.  He blamed Mr Mahama for abolished teacher and nursing training allowances, froze public sector employment, superintended over four years of dumsor, looked on as the Graduate unemployed association grew in numbers as well as returned the country to cash and carry under the NHIS.  “Were these all not threats to national security?” Dr. Bawumia asked. The Vice President noted that “We would all like to see the survival and growth of indigenous banks but we don’t want to have financial institutions that threaten the stability of the entire financial system whether they are indigenous or foreign. “We would rather have a few well-capitalised, liquid and sound banks than many weak, undercapitalized and illiquid banks that cannot effectively function as banks”.