The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has debunked claims of the ministry spending some GHC7.9 million on a GHC1.4 million project because the contractor working on it fell ill.
According to the ministry, its attention has been drawn to a news item which attributed to the Chief Director, Ambassador Ramses J. Cleland, during the ministry’s session with the Public Accounts Committee on Friday, 20th January, 2023. It indicated that the submission by the ambassador was “inaccurate”.
“Unfortunately, the project stalled completely from the period of 2009 to 2017 mainly due to the inability of the contractor to prefinance the project as a result of the lack of reimbursement for expenditure already incurred. Indeed, the bank accounts of IDR were garnished for its inability to pay back bank loans the company had taken to prefinance the project on schedule.”
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration
The foreign Affairs ministry stated that it is important it takes the opportunity to apprise the public about the extent of works and details of events that led to the delay and increased cost between the year 2007 and 2021. It revealed that Adu lodge, the project which was being worked on is a presidential lodge that consists of three buildings that were used to host various sizes of high-level delegations with the primary objective of saving the taxpayer avoidable expenses.
The ministry explained that this was the function of the lodge until it was closed, originally for rebuilding and subsequently revised for renovation.
Additionally, the ministry expressed that the original award of the project to Messrs International Development Resources (IDR) on 15th March, 2007 by the Architectural Engineering Services Ltd (AESL) was to demolish the existing three buildings that constituted the lodge at the time and construct a new building of twelve bedrooms at a contract of GHC1, 435, 728.98.
Commenting on the amount of money involved in the project, the ministry in a release stated that the contract sum was eventually revised in October 2011 to GHC4, 432, 558.78. It opined that at this time, the project had been reviewed to rather renovate the existing facilities and build additional ones for expansion and to create room for other ancillary facilities.
Project re-awarded to save country invested funds
Subsequently, the ministry stated that the sector minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, on her assumption of office in 2017, called for a review of the contract which was later re-awarded to save the country the already invested funds and put the facility to its originally intended use.
“The ministry, therefore, invited Public Works Department (PWD) Prestige to take over the supervision of the project in December 2017 after six years of inactivity. This necessitated the need to revisit, ascertain and revise the outstanding works on the project.”
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration
PWD Prestige’s assessment on the project revealed that the value of outstanding works was GHC5, 875, 318.96, per the prevailing market prices of 16th January 2018. The ministry disclosed that not long after, there was the need to include other works which did not form part of the initial bill. Owing to this, the reviewed bill pegged at GHC8, 330, 063.23.
“The ministry duly obtained the procedural approval of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and transmitted same to the PWD Prestige to enable the revival of the project.”
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration
Throughout the lifespan of the project, the ministry disclosed that sixteen interim payment certificates were raised and five of the sixteen were valued and raise by AESL and the remaining eleven by PWD Prestige after taking over the project.
In light of this, the foreign affairs ministry emphasized that the reasons for the stall in the completion of the project had been occasioned by several factors which include the redesign and delayed release of funds, delayed certification and delayed payment of certification issued to the contractor of AESL.
To this end, it assured the general public of its effort to sustain the prudent management of resources entrusted to it.
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