MP for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has revealed that a member of the Vice President’s manifesto team has been awarded a controversial GHS245 million single-sourced contract.
This revelation comes after intercepting documents that confirm the approval by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) to Spectrum Fibre Limited for a project valued at US$18,480,125.00, equivalent to GHS245 million.
“Spectrum Fibre Limited was incorporated on October 25, 2017. The Directors of Spectrum Fibre are Razak Awudulai and Fati Baba. Spectrum Fibre has no track record in carrying out what they have been engaged to do even though they were single-sourced. Further checks reveal that the owner of Spectrum Fibre, Mr. Razak Awudulai is currently serving on Vice President Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia’s 2024 Manifesto Communications Committee. Insiders say he also carries out ‘special duties’ for the Bawumia 2024 campaign.”
Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu
Hon. Ablakwa further indicated that Mr Razak Awudulai was also an appointee of President Akufo-Addo where he served as Managing Director of Go Energy, a subsidiary of GOIL in President Akufo-Addo’s first term.
According to Okudzeto Ablakwa, further digging revealed that Mr. Razak Awudulai is an MD of another digitalization company known as Broad Spectrum Limited which has been handed over millions of Ghana Cedis under questionable circumstances by the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund. It has emerged that there are many more exciting personal reasons for the Vice President’s determination to champion digitalization schemes.
The project involves building a Wide Network (WAN) Connectivity Services and Data Solution Centre for 745 sites across all regions on an Indefeasible Right of Use (IRU) basis for 10 years. The approval letter, signed by PPA Chief Executive, Mr Frank Mante, was addressed to the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye.
Ablakwa’s disclosure has sparked outrage among top officials within Ghana’s health sector, who believe the deal is a needless and cruel duplication. These officials argue that the services Spectrum Fibre has been contracted to provide are already covered by a GHS1.3 billion contract awarded to Lightwave eHealthcare Solutions Limited in 2017. Since then, Ghanaian taxpayers have paid Lightwave a significant sum of GHS595,873,749.23.
“With over GHS595million already paid to Lightwave under this supposedly bankrupt economy, every patriotic Ghanaian would be on the side of these top officials within the health sector who are livid and have legitimately had enough of the needless duplication and reckless dissipation of resources for private gain in the name of digitalization.”
Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu
Health Security at Risk
The MP indicated that the Spectrum Fibre deal did not receive the approval of the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) in contravention of Act 771 and in blatant disregard of the Minister of Communications and Digitalization’s circular of 16th June 2017.
Additionally, Ablakwa noted that under the World Bank US$ 50 million eTransform connectivity project, as many as 100 health facilities have already been captured which further exacerbates the wasteful and needless fears raised by stakeholders about the Spectrum Fibre deal.
“There are fundamental concerns about how most of these GHS2.6 billion dubious digitalization contracts in the health sector are violently breaching Ghana’s Data Protection Act. Insiders inform me that shockingly Ghana is not in control of our medical records being harvested by most of these crony companies. The Ghana Health Service does not even have access to the source codes. Our medical records are in the hands of people in India and elsewhere. The crony companies handling our medical records have failed to register with the Data Protection Commission.”
Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP for North Tongu
In response to the controversy, Ablakwa called for a petition to the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) on the corruption-related aspects of this exposé, a forensic audit into all health digitalization projects funded by donor partners, and a broader bi-partisan enquiry into all digitalization projects in Parliament. He emphasized the need for transparency and accountability in public procurement to prevent such issues in the future.
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