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Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper has charged government to consider fixing the pressing demands of the people in the country instead of considering implementing a 40-year development plan which will never materialize.

Kwesi Pratt said the erratic power supply which is crippling small scale businesses and industries in Ghana should be the first priority of government and not a 40-year plan which is difficult to achieve. “Every development plan is based on assumption. Our priority is not what will happen in 40 years time but rather our priority is about solving the pressing issue which is the energy crisis and other important issues.

If we won’t solve dumsor, then I’m sorry to say that we won’t also live to see 40 years,” he stated. Speaking on Adom fm Thursday on the back of the launch of a 40-year development plan by the National Development Plan Commission (NDPC) on Tuesday, Mr. Pratt opined that ‘nobody can predict what will happen in 40 years as far as our country is concerned and so they should stop dreaming because it won’t hold”.

The National Development Plan was part of the recommendations of the the Constitutional Review Commission. The Commission also among other things recommended that the plan should be national in character and should be region and district-specific. Despite President John Mahama hoping that the development plan will significantly transform Ghana, President of Think Tank, IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe described the 40-year as a ‘joke’.

And this view is subscribed by the veteran journalists who thinks the development plan will not hold in a multi party democracy. “If you have a one party state, then I think some progress will be made but with multi party states, it won’t work...the budget review even in one year didn’t hold, how do you expect a 40-year plan to work with all these ideologies from our political parties?” he asked.