If you’ve failed, resign – MP charges Mayor

Source: myjoyonline.com  -  The New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Ayawaso West Wuogon, Mr. Emmanuel Kyeremten Agyarko, has charged the Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive to resign if he believes that he has failed.

According to the MP, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije should have announced that he has resigned and not just admit that he has failed because it is obvious that he has.

“If you think you have failed then why are you still at post? The man should have been gone by now.

“I believe that if the Mayor has a conscience he would have resigned. It is under your watch that Accra has experienced its saddest day”, he said on Peace FM’s morning show ‘Kokrokoo’, Monday.

Following last Wednesday’s floods that swept away several properties running into millions of cedis and claimed more 100 lives, the Mayor has come under intense criticism.

Many are of the view that if he had carried out his much-vaunted promise of turning Accra into a Millennium City, floods of such magnitude would not have occurred.

The man who recently won the prestigious Jose Eduardo dos Santos African Best Mayor award at the second African urban infrastructure investment forum, is reported to have admitted on a radio station that he has failed the city.

Earlier he had blamed the floods on Ministry of Finance’s delay in the release of funds granted by the Exim bank of America for the CONTI project which will include the dredging the Odaw River in the center of the city and construction of some major drains.

The Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper, denied being the problem but said that there were no funds for the project because the bank had not released the amount.

He also said the AMA had not completed the processes required for the release of the funds although the President had cut sod for the construction of the drains to begin.

However, the MP says if government was indeed concerned about the welfare of the citizenry it would have put in place measures to prevent the situation from occurring.

He indicated that funds being used to construct the circle overpass and those that the Mayor invested to host the mayor's conference could have been used to construct the drains.

He likened government and the Mayor's attitude towards the needs of the people to that of a father who knows what to do but neglects his duties and wastes his money on “alcohol and unnecessary things”.

But “a father who knows that he has to pay school fees will prioritize and not waste his money on fruitless expenditure”.

Mr Agyarko faulted President Mahama for not taking action on AMA boss, saying he cared enough, “he would have fired the Mayor.“