President John Mahama has accused the main opposition New Patriotic Party of seeking to win votes among soldiers through the party’s recent promise to extend the service period for army recruits from 25 years to 30 years.
Addressing party supporters at Akroso in the Eastern Region, Mr Mahama wondered why the NPP never captured that “empty promise” in its manifesto in the first place.
“The things you want to do you have written in your manifesto; but why didn’t you write this one?” he asked, adding: “Because of politics, they want the soldiers’ support so they decided to do something that would get the soldiers’ support but it was an afterthought for them.”
“Our politics has moved forward. Ghanaians no longer take these kinds of promises on face value. It is not everything that will fly with Ghanaians. These promises and other things will not fly. It is the experience and delivery that Ghanaians want.”
“We in the NDC, if we won’t do something, we won’t say we will do it. But if we say we will do it, we will do it. When we promise, we deliver. We don’t make empty promises,” Mr Mahama said.
Last week, Deputy Minority Leader Dominic Nitiwul, who is also Chairman of the NPP’s sub-committee on Defense and Interior said a future government of Nana Akufo-Addo will review the defence strategy of the nation by adding five years to the retiring age of servicemen and women in the Ghana Armed Forces.
Instead of the compulsory retirement from the service after 25 years, the NPP will raise it to 30 years. “…We are also committed to the men and women of the Ghana Armed Forces. … In this respect, when the new government comes into office led by Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, we will review immediately the defence strategy of this nation. We believe that Ghana’s army will not be focused more on combat any longer.”
“There will be other things they will be more focused on carrying: cybercrime, helping the people, engaging in things that will support the nation as well as defending the territorial integrity of this nation, protecting our waters, not just the normal combat they do,” he stated.
“So we will review immediately the defence strategy and if that is the case, the convention of allowing our men to retire after serving 25 years, we will be reviewing it to look at the possibility of adding five more years and that means that unless you want to retire voluntarily, you have the opportunity to retire after 30 years in the force,” the Bimbilla legislator said.
According to him, “It is just right and equitable that if a civil servant is allowed to retire at 60 years you don’t ask somebody in the army to retire at 45 years if he enters at 20 years and then he goes home and has nothing to do.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
