CJA to hit the streets on December 11

The Committee for Joint Action (CJA), a pressure group made up of opposition leaders, on Thursday announced that it would hold a demonstration dubbed: "Ye wuooo", Agbe woeee" or "We are being killed" on December 11, in Accra.The group said the protest was against the general economic hardship, corruption, drugs, unemployment and official impunity, which had engulfed the nation.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra, Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr., spokesperson for the group, called on government to review all its policy initiatives to alleviate the suffering of the mass of the people.He said since the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government came to power in January 2001 it had increased petroleum prices by 700 per cent from 6,400 cedis per gallon to 44,000 cedis per gallon. The November 1 increase in petroleum prices is the fifth for this year.Mr. Pratt said the November 1 increases in water and electricity tariffs represented an average increase of 35 per cent."Our leaders do not see our suffering. Rather, they seize each and every excuse to increase our burdens.

"He noted that the recent power crisis was the result of the failure of our leaders to anticipate and plan for a situation, which experts had predicted many years ago.Mr. Pratt, who is also the member of the Convention People's Party (CPP), also chastised the government for failing to make treated water available for the growing population.He said the quality of service from the Ghana Water Company (GWC) to the poor had been decreasing hence the outbreak of cholera, dysentery and guinea worm, which the people were suffering from.

Mr. Pratt said the government's response had been to transfer the exorbitant and increasing costs of the incompetence of the new foreign operators of GWC to the public.He also stated that the recent revelations from the Public Accounts Committee sittings and the ostentatious lifestyles of the several NPP Presidential aspirants showed the levels of corruption and waste that the government had presided over in the last seven years.

Mr. Pratt also said some of the unfortunate incidents, which had resulted in bloodshed, loss of live and property could have been avoided."We are seeing the same disintegration now in the Anlo crisis, itself a chilling reminder of the dangerous politics of divide and rule and pandering to backward elitism that gave us the still unresolved Dagbon crisis."
Source:GNA