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Joyce Mogtari flays govt for abandoning projects

Joyce Mogtari, a former Deputy Minister of Transport in the John Mahama-led administration, has questioned the government on the status of its audit of infrastructure projects initiated under the erstwhile administration.

She challenged the government to release reports of the audit to justify the administration’s decision to suspend the contracts and accused the government of abandoning the projects under the guise of the audit.

“When the transition took place and a new government came into office, one of the things we were told for example about the cocoa roads was that they were investigating, GHc10 million was spent on those audits, where are we on those roads today? The portions of the eastern corridor leading to Hohoe that had been started and yet contractors were asked to stop work midway for audit to be carried out and then the rains came.”

“What does it do to the roads? What does it do to the taxpayer’s money? What it means is that even though the roads had been commenced and had gotten to a certain stage, once the work was stopped, most of the effort put in will be lost on the citizenry who use the roads and other infrastructure,” Ms Mogtari lamented.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) raised concerns about the government spending GHc10 million on auditing road projects and other infrastructure which the government suspended work on cocoa road projects in 2017 for an audit, following corruption concerns.

The audits were done because the Mahama-led administration was accused of awarding over 230 different road contracts to the tune of GH₵3.5 billion to the detriment of COCOBOD’s finances and among those making the complaints was the former National Organizer of the NDC, Kofi Adams.

According to him, “the decision contributed to the nation’s current infrastructure deficit,

all you needed to do is to stop payment or to pay for what has been done,  the contractors can continue with work whilst the government investigate if there was any underhand dealings.”

Osafo Maafo, the Senior Minister, stated that the report on the audit of cocoa roads and other infrastructure projects would be published at the appropriate time and assured that the government was not hiding audit report on the issue saying “since report is available and still being looked at in detail, I think at  appropriate time, it will be published.” -citinewsroom.com

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