By Nasratu Kargbo
The All People’s Congress (APC) party manifesto has committed to offering free technical vocational education in a bid to invest in the country’s citizens. The party’s ‘One Nation Manifesto’ which was launched on the 29th May 2023, said one of its ten priority areas is ‘accelerating investment in our people’, and that the party could achieve this by prioritizing skills development.
It said the party intends to work with public-private partnerships to fund technical education in order to ease the burden on the public resources.
Still on prioritizing skills development, the Manifesto explained that the party will review the design and implementation of the students’ loan scheme in order to increase access to higher and technical education to children in low income homes.
Better health system will be another way of investing in the citizens and the party promised to invest in the health of the citizens by ensuring there is increased access, affordable, quality health services, increase in highly trained health workforce, reduced dependence on foreign health tourism, reduction in maternal and infant mortality and an improved sexual reproductive health for women and girls.
The Manifesto said “We will put effective measures in place to hold medical staff accountable for their actions”. It explained that special monitoring and delivery teams will be formed at the district level to track activities, processes, inputs and outputs in the medical sector and report for corrective actions.
Whilst in the area of food security, the APC promised to increase and improve investment in agriculture by increasing the budget to over 10% of the total expenditure. The party through their Manifesto explained that the budget will be geared towards increasing rice production, other food production, poultry, livestock and cash crop production.
In addition, they committed to engaging the financial sector actors to design agricultural friendly financial products with the planting cycle in mind, adding that they will collaborate with banks and other financial institutions for the development of instruments that will ease access to finance for smallholder farmers.
“Collaborate with the private sector to enhance rural infrastructure, including roads, storage facilities and cold chains to reduce post-harvest losses” a part iof the manifesto reads.
It explained that the party intends to work in tandem with partners to enhance the transportation, marketing and distribution of agricultural produce from the farms to the market centres.
The manifesto said it has been proven that the people are a country’s greatest resources. “We shall invest in our people and improve their productivity through education and skills development, good health and health security, agriculture and food security, social protection of the most improvised segment of our population and vulnerable groups, housing and upgrading informal settlements and sports development creativity with an added focus on women’s empowerment”, it states.
Copyright (2023) Politico (12/06/23)
