Okoe Boye
Former Health Minister Dr Bernard Okoe Boye has called on the National Democratic Congress government to apologise to Ghana’s youth for what he describes as a deliberate misrepresentation of the 24-hour economy policy during the 2024 election campaign, arguing that Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson’s own public admission has now exposed the promise as one the NDC knew it could not keep.
Speaking on Asempa FM, Dr Okoe Boye said the NDC’s campaign pledge to run a three-shift economy was made with full knowledge of the country’s existing wage bill constraints. He pointed directly to statements by Ato Forson acknowledging that under the current recovered economy, the government must borrow to pay public sector workers after meeting statutory fund obligations, as evidence that the arithmetic behind the 24-hour promise was never credible.
“When the NDC was talking about the 133 shifts, they were speaking to what they can control and not the private sector. Typical of the NDC, the first shift, they do not have the money to cover the wage bill,” he said.
Dr Okoe Boye argued that the same awareness that prevented President Mahama from expanding public sector employment during his first term in office should have cautioned him against making the three-shift promise in 2024. The wage bill reality, he said, was not a new discovery but a structural constraint the president understood from experience.
He further noted that the Ato Forson admission is particularly significant because the Finance Minister, as a senior opposition figure during the Akufo-Addo years, was acutely aware that after meeting the District Assemblies Common Fund, the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), and the National Health Insurance Levy, the government routinely struggles to cover its salary obligations. The capping policy introduced under the previous administration, he said, was a direct consequence of exactly that fiscal reality.
The 24-Hour Economy Authority Bill was signed into law by President Mahama on February 20, 2026, creating a formal institutional structure for the policy, though critics have argued that what has been delivered so far is an institutional shell with no operational content.
Dr Okoe Boye stopped short of calling for the policy to be abandoned but insisted that honesty with the public must come first. He warned the government that the youth who were mobilised by the promise are watching and will deliver their verdict at the next election.
“When you use smartness and duplicity to get power, the victims of these games wait for you at the polls in three years,” he said. “The more you talk about it, the more you anger the people you played games with.”