In the spirit of the massive kneejerk that hit the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) launched its manifesto for the 2020 elections, the NPP is now promising to pay the rent of Ghanaians if it is retained in power.
Nana Akomea, a member of Communications team of the NPP has advertised a rent payment scheme that Akufo-Addo now plans to set up if he is retained in office.
He calls the free rent program as the Rental Assistance scheme.
“Government will in effect pay the rent Advance for you, and you pay the rent monthly to the scheme.
“In effect then, the NPP government in its next term will eliminate the big problem of rent advance facing the youth and indeed many other Ghanaians,” Nana Akomea announced today at a press conference in Accra.
It is not clear if the NPP has decided that RAS is the acronym for the new policy that the party now wants Ghanaians to vote for it for. However, RAS, or whatever acronym that the NPP is looking at giving this free rent program has not been captured in the party’s manifesto for the 2020 election which many have said is rather mundane.
Nana Akomea however insists the plans for RAS are solid and that government has already instigated legislation in this respect.
“Government will implement the necessary regulatory and operational bodies to anchor the policy,” he stated.
“Indeed as we speak, a new Rent Control Act has been drafted for review by Cabinet in this direction. So basically, when this National Rental Assistance comes into being in the next NPP government, the big problem of two to three years Advance rent would greatly reduce, if not ended.”
All Ghanaian voters need to do is vote for Akufo-Addo and the over 30million Ghanaians can say goodbye to the hassle of having to pay rent, which is charged on advance bases that the government has miserably failed to tame.
The rent advances, Akomea explained would be paid directly into the bank accounts of beneficiary landlords and it would target Ghanaian youth in both formal and informal sectors, with identifiable or regular income.
Nobody knows where the money for the scheme would come from if the NPP, which is trailing in most opinion polls manages a second term.
Already, the country’s finances are in tatters with the World Bank and the IMF warning the country is at a very high risk of debt unsustainability.