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Deputy Information Minister, Pius Enam Hadzide has slammed the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) for describing the Akufo-Addo government as “cruel” for opening schools for the final year students to write their exit exams.

The National Communication Officer of the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has said it is “cruel” on the part of President Nana Akufo-Addo to open Senior High Schools in the midst of a raging pandemic, prevent parents from visiting their wards yet open “the same schools for his party, NPP, and the Electoral Commission, who prioritise political power than human lives, to go in there and engage in shameful political activities which have the tendency to endanger the lives of our innocent SHS students.”

Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Monday, 13th July 2020 on Ghana’s COVID-19 fight, Mr Gyamfi accused the government of doing little to curb the spread of the virus.

“The premature reopening of Senior High Schools by President Akufo-Addo without mass testing of students, teachers and workers as well as the failure to put in place and enforce appropriate safety measures in the reopened schools, which is leading to the spread of the virus among SHS students, is yet another major setback for our COVID-19 fight," he told the press.

“Today, it is sad and annoying to note that apart from the disregard for our COVID-19 safety protocols in our schools, the reopened schools have become centres, in fact, hotbeds for political campaigns by the ruling New Patriotic Party as was seen over the weekend when their National Youth Organiser, Henry Nana Boakye, led a team to campaign in some senior high schools in the Ashanti Region,” he added.

Reacting to the NDC's press conference on Okay FM’s 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the Deputy Information Minister scorned the NDC for not showing leadership in the fight against the COVID-19 as the whole world is worried and planning to end the pandemic.

He added that the NDC has not conducted any critical analysis on the fight against the novel coronavirus except to make ugly noise about it in order to create fear and panic as well as to throw dust into the eyes of Ghanaians with the hope it will fetch them some votes in the upcoming elections.

“They are simply introducing politics of fear and uncertainty with the hope that Ghanaians will vote for them out of fear, that is exactly what they are doing with the Covid-19. If you listen to the NDC carefully, they are always doing blame-game, name-calling and insults, but one will never hear talk about policy alternative as to how to address the issue of the Covid-19. We don’t normally hear them give alternative solution or policy direction to the issues they criticize the government for,” he slammed.

To him, the only closer policy alternative the opposition NDC has always champion is to shut down the entire country, asking for the collective existence of Ghanaians to come to an end as the country is hit with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The only thing you hear them talk about which is closer to policy alternative is to shut down this or to close down that; as though we are hit with the Covid-19 pandemic, the whole nation should sit idle doing nothing and close the whole country so that our collective existence will come to an end,” he indicated.

“So, you see that they don’t have any credible alternative for the country in the fight against the Covid-19. We admit that there is no vaccine in sight for the treatment of the Covid-19 but rather we are determined not to allow this virus win the battle and so we have put measures in place in order to make progress as a country”, he added.