The Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Hon. Isaac Adongo, has argued that the government of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama is fully committed to social protection.
He emphasized that contrary to the claims of the minority that the government is reneging on its responsibility to protect the vulnerable, the reality can be found in the budget.
The ranking member on the Defense and Interior Committee of parliament, Hon. John Ntim Fordjour, had claimed that the government is focused on purchasing expensive jets instead of providing the Ghana Armed Forces with the needed aircraft for their activities.
He argued that the government is rather focusing on expensive travels rather than providing the basic needs of the Ghanaian people.
However, Hon. Adongo is of the view that the 2026 budget is a holistic one that is targeted at providing the needs of all Ghanaians.
He emphasized that the government is fully committed to ensuring holistic growth in the economy, highlighting key aspects of the budget to back his claims.
He stated that the major part of social spending is for the frontline Ghanaian vulnerable communities, who are being taken care of by the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) program, capitation grants, the school feeding program, and others.
He noted that the government’s commitment to these programs is properly reflected in the budget and is therefore not questionable.
“We are making resources available to improve the LEAP program. We are giving first-line support to improve the capitation grants for children in rural communities. We want to improve the delivery of school feeding so that the quality and quantity are better.”
Hon. Isaac Adongo, Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament
He further stated that these initiatives are all social services that underpin the work of the government as they try to improve social protection.
Hon. Adongo further noted that the government recognizes the need to take care of the vulnerable in society, even as there is that commitment to investing in major projects that can deliver impactful economic growth and development.
“We do know that as part of social protection, it is not easy for everybody to equally join in delivering and providing the economic transformation that we are seeing. Others must be brought up to be able to join that activity.”
Hon. Isaac Adongo, Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament
He further noted that in the field of agriculture, the government has adopted an approach to improve both commercial agriculture and peasant farming.
He emphasized that in order to support agriculture as a social protectionist, “while you are doing commercial agriculture, you must handhold the peasant farmers, because that is a livelihood program.”
“You’ll find that there’s a lot of emphasis on commercial agriculture, but also on making sure that our peasant farmers are not left behind. So, the Nkoko Nketenkete program is a social program to make sure that the rural communities are able to see economic activity and be able to contribute their quota towards the development of our country.”
Hon. Isaac Adongo, Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament
The finance committee chairman further emphasized that with the security services, it is not only the army that the government is working at retooling to improve their services.
He noted that the government has plans for all the security services in terms of retooling and even recruitment of more officers into each of them.
“We think that the capacity that the police need for internal security must be announced, and there’s a lot in this budget to do that.” He stated.
Hon. Adongo also noted that it is out of this commitment that the government has announced the purchase of fire tenders to equip the Ghana National Fire Service.
“The Minister for Interior, Honourable Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, will be giving resources to retool the fire service.” He stated.
“There is also the policy thinking to try and leverage the private sector to provide capacity to fight fire in some of the high-rise buildings that are coming up.
“Because if you have a high-rise building like the Bank of Ghana Square, you know, with a fire on the 18th floor, you must have firefighting capacity beyond the fire tenders.”
Hon. Isaac Adongo, Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament
He stated that “there are a lot of provisions in the budget to deal with the Army and to retool the Army.”
He further emphasized that the government is doing a lot to improve the economy holistically by ensuring industrialization and also taking care of the vulnerable.
He therefore admonished the minority to understand that being an opposition party does not mean you should oppose everything.
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