We’ll not harass or threaten people who criticise my gov’t – President Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has given a firm assurance that his administration will be tolerant of dissenting views from Ghanaians, emphasising that critics will not be victimised.

In a meeting with the Christian Ecumenical Council from the Volta Region at the Jubilee House on Wednesday, 22nd January, the President acknowledged the challenges of the country’s democracy and urged the religious community to serve as his administration’s moral conscience.

I urge you, when things are not going well, to be able to raise your voices and draw our attention to it.

President Mahama assured that his government would uphold the freedom of speech of all Ghanaians as well as press freedom, noting that people who criticise his decisions will not be victimised.

The government I lead is not an intolerant government. If people speak and criticise us, we're not going to come and harass them and hound them and give them threatening phone calls. I believe that the church can speak freely, the media can speak freely, and we will take it as a positive instrument for correcting whatever they are referring to.

In his speech, the President emphasised the need to reset the country, noting that the Volta Region is pivotal to economic development. He pledged to focus primarily on infrastructural development in the region and to provide job opportunities for the youth.

He disclosed plans to harness agribusiness to create employment opportunities:

The focus would be on exploiting the potential so that we can create jobs for the young people especially. And so in that regard, agriculture and agribusiness is one of the places we want to look at. And so the production of oil palm.

We're not just going to grow the oil palm; we're going to put the processing facilities for the oil palm in the Volta Region so that as the farmers harvest, we'll have the processing facilities to process the oil palm for the market.

President Mahama, therefore, rallied the support of the clergy and all stakeholders towards implementing his plans for the region and the country.