[ 2017-05-22 ]

Work on the official residence of the Vice President seems to have stalled

$13.9 million Veep's residence abandoned?
Work on the official residence of the
Vice-President appears to have stalled following
the debate over the cost of the project between
the Akufo-Addo administration and officials of the
previous regime.

Joy News checks over the weekend revealed that
there was no activity at the site as the project
site has been cordoned off with green corrugated
roofing sheets.

A young man who lives close to the property said
the last time he saw the contractor around was in
2016.

The security man inside the uncompleted project
declined to step out to talk to the media but
rather responded to Joy News' Maxwell Agbagba via
the CCTV cameras.

He said contractors were just doing some minor
works on the building adding construction has
dragged for some time now.

Dr Mahamudu Bawumia stirred controversy in January
this year when he expressed shock after finding
out that the official residence under construction
for the country’s Vice Presidents, would cost
the country a whopping $13.9 million.

He questioned whether the doors of the apartment
were gold-plated to merit such profligacy.

Speaking at an event on good corporate governance,
he disclosed that upon enquiries as to why the
construction of the Vice President’s official
residence was delaying, he was told that the state
owed the contractor who worked on the project, an
amount he later found was close to $14 million.

He made the comment while sharing his thoughts on
sole-sourcing and its associated challenges,
questioning why such a huge amount would be spent
on a home for a Vice President.

“I asked a question as to why this project is
being delayed and they said the contractor is owed
a lot of money and I asked how much is this money,
and I am told it is actually a lot of money.

“Can you believe in Ghana we are building a
house to house our Vice President, and this house
is supposed to cost $13.9 million? “I mean what
sort of a house is this supposed to be? Is the
gate made of gold? The pavement of gold? The
blocks of gold? A house in Ghana for $13.9
million? I could not believe it.

"How many boreholes could we have done…? Of
course, I am 100 percent sure it did not go
through competitive tender, otherwise, we would
have known about it.

"It was most likely sole-sourced, and there it
stands uncompleted at the moment. This is just an
example of many contracts that we do not have
value for money for.”

Dr. Bawumia criticized the pervasiveness of
single-sourced procurement in public projects,
stressing that the previous administration had
made single-source procurement the rule rather
than the exception.

However, speaking to the issue, the General
Secretary of the National Democratic Congress
(NDC), Johnson Asiedu Nketia was at the forefront
of exonerating the government of John Mahama of
any wrongdoing.

"The documents that I have seen shows that the
original contract sum was $3.56 million," he told
Joy News.

He said a department of the Ministry of Water
Resources, Works and Housing did all the technical
works of the building and brought up how much it
would cost to build it and this was subsequently
approved by Parliament.

Source - Myjoyonline.com

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