The Member of Parliament for North Tongue Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has called out the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo to lead by example in the period of austerity where his government keeps appealing to “the struggling public sector workers to lower wage increase expectations”.
For the North Tongue MP, the President’s refusal to use the State’s acquired Jet, amounts to a blatant betrayal to Ghana and to all the past leaders who have used the presidential aircraft ordered by President Kufuor, used by the late President John Evans Atta Mills and former President John Dramani Mahama thereby expressing worry over why President Akufo-Addo “chooses to charter a top-of-the-range luxury aircraft offered by Acropolis Aviation”.
He stated that the Airbus ACJ320neo owned by Acropolis Aviation based in Farnborough, UK and registered as G-KELT is the most luxurious and the most expensive in the Acropolis fleet which the manufacturers described as “the most outstanding ambassador for Airbus Corporate Jets” costing the Ghanaian taxpayer approximately £15,000 an hour when President Akufo-Addo rents it.
To support his argument, the legislator analyzed the recent foreign trip by the President to Europe. He pointed out that “per Flightradar24, the G-KELT aircraft left Accra with the President to Paris on the 16th of May, 2021 — a 6 and half hour duration, airlifted the President from Paris to Johannesburg for 11 hours on the 23rd of May, 2021, then from Johannesburg to Accra on the 25th of May, 2021 — a five and half hour flight. This gives us an accumulated flight travel of 23 hours. So at £15,000 an hour, it thus cost us a colossal £345,000. At current exchange, that is a staggering GHS 2, 828,432.80“.
Demonstrating how much the country would have saved if the President had travelled with the state aircraft, the MP noted that experts inform him it would have cost Ghana less than 15% of this 2.8million Ghana Cedis.
“The irony is that President Akufo-Addo engaged in this fantastic extravagance on his way to France to beg President Emmanuel Macron for debt cancellation, needless to add that President MacRon does not travel in such splendour”.
“Let us imagine what GHS2.8million could do for our country, particularly considering the mess in multiple sectors which has led to legitimate #FixTheCountryNow agitations by the youth” he added.
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa therefore filed an urgent question in Parliament to compel the Akufo-Addo administration to be accountable to the Ghanaian people on this matter and ultimately to prick their conscience to end “this obscene profligacy at this time of considerable economic hardships”.
