Ghana's middle income status is voodoo economics – Akosa

A former Director General of the Ghana Health Service has rubbished Ghana's middle income status, saying it is misleading.

Prof. Agyemang Badu Akosa explained the new status announced last year does not reflect the true situation of the average Ghanaian.

On the contrary, he said, majority of Ghanaians are living in squalor, and harsh economic conditions, demanding that the true measure of middle income must be human-based and not meaningless figures.

He was speaking at a forum organized by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of institution from where Luv FM's Elton John Brobbey reported, the failed CPP flagbearer in the 2008 elections as saying, 'Our burden of disease is so high and it is because we are not fixing the wider social determinant. Nobody is fixing environmental sanitation; nobody is fixing personal hygiene; nobody is fixing safe water; nobody is fixing air quality; nobody is fixing the problems of the road, the problems of transportation so the health service sadly feels the pinch from all these areas,' he said.

He said the country must take a bold decision to ensure that there is a minimum standard below which no Ghanaian will fall.

'On our human development, we are not doing well and we should stop using the fact that telecom companies and oil companies have jagged up our GDP so we are happy to say we are a middle income country.

'I am saying let us use our living standard to measure whether we are a middle income country or not and as far as I am concerned, on a human development index, we are not a middle income country,” he stated.

Source: Myjoyonline