Former President John Dramani Mahama has described the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government’s newly launched Digital Addressing System as pitiful.
According to him, the addressing system is fraudulent, and that someone must be punished for misusing state funds to procure the system.
“How can you launch a Google GPS system that is freely available on our mobile phone and say it is a national addressing system. It is such a pity. Why will you embarrass the president so much? You go and take a whole president to bring him to come and launch a system that is 419,” John Mahama said.
The former president made the statement in an address to thousands of party supporters in the Central Regional capital, Cape Coast, after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) held its third Unity Walk after the December polls.
The former president said he had restrained himself from commenting on governance issues after losing the presidential seat to the NPP’s Nana Akufo-Addo, because he believed that every new government needed time to settle in office, but “it looks like NPP is whittling away its honeymoon period with the mistakes that it is doing.”
He called on the president to “show that he is serious about corruption” by holding someone accountable for the launch of the $2.5 million digital addressing system which he [Mahama] believes is fraudulent.
“When we talk about accountability, this is where the president should show that he is serious about corruption. Somebody must account for 15 million giving away free of charge. When I was in office, there was a bus branding incident, GH¢3.6m, a minister of state resigned because of GH¢3.6m,” John Mahama said.
He, however accused the President of not being able to “take firm action in anything”.
What is wrong with the digital addressing system?
The Digital Addressing System, christened, Ghana Post GPS, which was launched on October 18, 2017, was part of the NPP’s ideas to formalizing the country’s economy by digitally mapping and proving a digital address to all locations and properties in the country.
The project was undertaken by Vokakom at a cost of $2.5million.
Following its launch, many IT experts have cast doubt over the system, spelling out various flaws that make it a faulty tool to undertake the purpose for which it was built.
Among the flaws some have mentioned, is the over-reliance of the app on internet connectivity especially when internet penetration in the country is still low.
$2.5m digital addressing system ‘419’- Mahama
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