A Senior Lecturer of the University of Education, Winneba, Dr. Ahmed Jinapor, has sent a note to the government, informing it to be very cautious to the approach of its one One-District-One-Factory flagship project.
He said the government should not necessarily force itself to build factories for the sake of fulfilling campaign promise.
What should be of prime concern to the government, he added, is the building of factories that are viable to operate and which will meet the standards of a factory, directing the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo-led administration to be guided by the rehabilitation of the Komenda Sugar Factory which has now become a white elephant.
Interacting with TV 3, Saturday, over the US$400million Chinese facility which was announced by the Vice-President to have been secured by the country to kick start 22 factories, Mr. Jinapor said the facility even though good, it should be used for viable projects that will inure to the benefit of the country.
“I want to see a meaningful start and a viable factory of course. I don’t want factories to be put up for the sake of factories just like the Komenda Sugar Factory. I don’t want a situation where the NPP will put up a factory and tomorrow when they are not in power and NDC comes in they will say that this factory is not viable. Also I don’t want a situation whereby they will come and say we have put up a gari processing factory which in its sense will be one machine at a very high cost”, he noted.
He added “So, let’s have a bipartisan agreement and understanding that look when we have factories and they are factories built by the Nana Addo’s NPP government, they are not going to be owned by Nana Addo and the NPP; they are going to be owned by the country”.
To achieve the objective of the One-District-One-Factory agenda, Mr. Jinapor said the private must play a very pivotal role.
“When this whole agenda was being moved by the NPP, I thought their interest or the way forward was government trying to build a platform or arrangement such that the private sector can buy into it and can own it. So, the government needs to be very cautious with its approach towards the one-district-one factory agenda. It should not just be necessarily a political manifesto promise that we need to realize at all cost”, he emphasized.
