Chief, NDC cited in 'Missing' GHS100k disability fund

Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in the Upper East region are seriously up in arms against a chief, some front runners of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and a number of assembly officials for their alleged involvement in the disappearance of over GH¢100,000 from the Disability Fund.

They told Starr News their protests “will only expire” when their calls for the accounts of all the municipal and district assemblies in the region to be audited “yield undeniable results” and all the Disability Fund Management Committees (DFMCs) in the region are reconstituted. Starr News learns there are about 39,000 disabled persons in the Upper East region.

The NDC activists are said to have dipped their hands deep in the fund, fetched thousands of cedis from it and splashed the “stolen notes” on party campaign activities in the run-up to the 2016 general elections. The assembly officials reportedly made some illegal deductions after they ‘primitively’ lifted heavy money sacks from one community to another, instead of issuing a cheque or a payment order, to disburse the fund to disabled persons in the region.

And after 30 disabled persons at Yinduri, a village in the Talensi District, had received some varied amounts of money due them from the fund, the chief of the area, Naba Nigbil Mabazaa, purportedly gathered GH¢100 from each of the beneficiaries as a thank-you package for members of the DFMC who disbursed the fund in the district. According to the agitators, the chief did not deliver the ‘dubious’ thank-you package to the committee and he also has refused to refund the cash to the disabled subjects.

The disquiet came up strongly Wednesday when TEERE, a Non-Governmental Organisation, jointly launched a project dubbed “Promoting Transparency and Accountability in the Management, Disbursement and Procedures and Utilisation of the 3% District Assembly Common Fund Allocated to Persons with Disabilities” with the Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations (GFD) in Bolgatanga, the regional capital. Funded by the French Embassy in Ghana, the project is aimed at ensuring that the Disability Fund is disbursed early, not misapplied and goes to the targets directly.

“The chief asked them to contribute GH¢100 each because he’s going to thank the people who brought the money. There were about 30 people. That’s about GH¢3,000. It is not his mandate as the chief of the area to ask beneficiaries to contribute money to go and thank the officers who brought the money. After all, the officers of the assembly who brought the money are performing their constitutionally mandated duty- to serve the people,” said the Upper East Regional President of the GFD, David Aniah.

Mr. Aniah, who said the findings were uncovered during a community entry exercise undertaken by the GFD in company with TEERE, added: “We know the party that was in power from 2010 to 2016. Towards the end of 2016, the politicians in the Builsa South District brought together some party supporters who were not even persons with disabilities and told them they had funding for them. They gave everyone GH¢100 each for votes. The money meant for persons with disabilities was shared among their party functionaries.”

“You go to the Kassena-Nankana West District,” he continued. “There was a memo that we cited. The memo indicated that they were going to support 30 disabled farmers in the Chiana Zone. The assembly approved GH¢3,000 for that purpose. After going through the memo, we decided to go and speak to the group in Chiana. We realised that there was nothing of that sort.

"In the Sirigu Zone under the same district, another set of money was approved for about 300 disabled people; but a lot of them told us they had never heard anything about the fund. The former Social Welfare Officer in that district said some people had benefited but he could not tell us those who had benefited."

He added: “Paragraph 378 of the 2016 Auditor-General’s Report has also indicated that an amount of GH¢62,091.68, which was part of the Disability Fund, was misapplied by the Binduri District Assembly. Up to now, the assembly cannot tell what that money was actually used for. It is indicated in the bank account that these monies were withdrawn. And I can confidently tell you that these monies were withdrawn towards the 2016 general elections. They used the monies to finance election campaign. The immediate-past DCE would tell you that he’s aware of where that money is gone to because no one, without his authorisation, could go in to withdraw any money from the bank. Putting together all these mismanaged monies that went into individuals’ pockets, it should be hitting GH¢100,000 plus.”

Findings are an eye-opener- Professor Avea

The revelations left many observers frozen with shock. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of TEERE, Professor Ephraim Nsoh Avea, in his post-launch remarks, described the discoveries as “an eye-opener”.

“This is an eye-opener and it tells us how to go about resolving the problem. That is quite shocking because no one should do that. If you take the fund, you should be able to disburse it according to the guidelines and, at the end of it, give report to the people you are supposed to give it to,” he stated.

In a welcome address he delivered earlier, the veteran researcher and lecturer had raised four questions the public most probably would have in mind on the mind-blowing findings.

“Why will we manage a fund that we ourselves have set aside in a manner that allows the French government to provide funds for us to police? Why will we allow funds allocated to such a very disadvantaged and vulnerable group to be so poorly managed when we ourselves identified and committed these funds?

“The District Assemblies have various sources of income including IGF and the DACF. Why will assembly staff still be so desperate in interfering in the disbursement of the fund? Finally, those who interfere with the disbursement are paid. The target PWDs on the other hand are unemployed with very limited sources of livelihood. Why will we be interested in borrowing or misapplying such funds?” the CEO posed as a speechless audience listened with shock gestures.

TEERE, Professor Avea said, would continue to work closely with such stakeholders as the GFD, the assemblies, the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), the French Embassy in Ghana, the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council (UERCC) and the Senior Experten Service (SES) among others to sustain and widen the impact of the project. He disclosed to Starr News that more funding was being sought to scale up the project to cover the entire region and beyond.

The Upper East Regional Minister, Rockson Bukari, observed with displeasure that bribery and corruption had become so “widespread and deep-rooted” in the country that the trend now calls for “drastic remedial measures”.

An endemic misuse of public funds, he stressed, is a threat to foreign investments. Dr. Marion Chapon, the Cooperation Attaché at the French Embassy in Ghana, representing the French Ambassador to Ghana, Francois Pujolas, at the event lauded TEERE’s commitment to the values France had always cherished and supported through the French Solidarity Programme.

“More specifically, the concern to offer people with disabilities, and among them women who are often the most vulnerable, a better access to the Fund dedicated to them with a purpose of educational and socio-professional integration, is in line with the priority objectives of the French Solidarity Programme,” she said.

I have no idea about “missing cash” – Former DCE

Meanwhile, the former District Chief Executive (DCE) for Binduri, Daniel Adoliba, has refuted any knowledge about the said withdrawal of over GH¢62,000 for his party’s election campaign trail in 2016.

“The records are in the assembly there. I have no idea about that,” Mr. Adoliba told Starr News.

Starr News tried in vain for more than 12 hours to reach the Chief of Yinduri. His mobile telephone line was busy throughout the time of attempts to hear his side of the story. The Assemblyman for Yinduri, James Doguriba, told Starr News, “The beneficiaries told me he (the chief) said it’s one Clement who went for it (the money), not him (the chief). When I confronted Clement, he was denying and was saying that it was the chief (who took the money) himself.”

The immediate-past Kassena-Nankana West District Social Welfare Officer, who was also fingered in the alleged rot, did not answer the telephone calls placed to him Thursday morning.