Leave Jospong Group alone! - Allotey Jacobs tells Manasseh

Investigations by journalist Manasseh Azure indicated that the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development single-sourced a 98-million cedi fumigation contract to eleven companies belonging to the Jospong Group of Companies.

The contract, which was awarded in 2015, is said to have been issued at a time had two spraying contracts with another member of the Jospong Group, Zoomlion, to do the same job. The two Zoomlion contracts covered all the 216 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

The contract awarded in 2015 for four months, was for fumigation across the country but some of the assemblies say they do not know about the companies which were supposed to undertake the exercise in their localities.

“Zoomlion Ghana Limited has a long running fumigation or open spraying contract with all the 216 MMDAs in the country. In a year, each district assembly pays Gh?161, 000, every municipal assembly pays GH?184, 000 while the Metropolitan assemblies pay GH?207,000 each, for the fumigation.

There are Six Metropolitan Assemblies, 55 Municipal Assembliese, and 155 District Assemblies. So in all, Zoomlion is paid GH?36.3 million cedis to spray refuse dumps, public toilets and markets to curtail the outbreak of diseases such as cholera", a publication by Joy FM further read.

The Local Government reportedly signed another contract to a sum of GHC 98 million with 11 companies belonging to the same company.

Though several concerns have been raised regarding the contract, the NDC Central Regional Chairman Allotey Jacobs finds absolutely nothing wrong with the issue.

According to him, Azure and his ilk are only seeking to destroy Jospong Group. Allotey Jacobs noted that it is a practice by every businessman to "manipulate" opportunities in order to make financial gains.

He stated that "when vacuums are created, he takes advantage of it, manipulate it and then make business out of it".

"Is that wrong? Is that wrong? Why? Why are you destroying Ghanaian company? Do we want foreigners to own corporate Ghana?” he further questioned.

To him, the critics want to collapse the businesses by Joseph Siaw Agyepong, Executive Chairman of Jospong Group, by denting his image and that of his companies.

He wondered why people would seek to sabotage Jospong Group when foreigners are taking over local markets in the country. “Why can’t we build corporate Ghana by Ghanaians . . . ? We want foreigners to own Ghana. We’re sitting here and like joke, foreign banks are owning our banking institutions. They’re on top as against Ghanaian banks."

"...Is somebody fleecing the national coffers? No! We’re creating that impression because we want to destroy that person. We want to destroy that company. So, we’re creating an impression to become a perception and then Ghanaians will feed into it,” Allotey said.