Ministry Reacts To Audit Report

Works and Housing Minister, Yaw Barimah has admitted that procedures for handing money over to the office of the Chief of Staff were not followed in the renovation of some official government buildings. But he has accused the Minority NDC MPs of deliberately using an interim report on the projects for a smear campaign against the government. The audit report has been the basis of the Minority’s claim that two government officials caused the state to lose 577 million cedis, demanding that the officials be made to refund the amount to the state.

But Mr. Barimah told a news conference in Accra that the report was presented to his ministry to enable it respond to queries raised by the audit team before the final report.

Mr. Barimah said the Acting Chief Director of the Ministry of Works and Housing responded to the queries in a letter dated June 10, 2002. The letter explained that out of the 150 million cedis released to the Office of the Chief of Staff when Jake Obetsebi Lamptey was in office, 100 million cedis was paid as advance for refurbishment works at the President's Office.

Of the remaining 50 million cedis, the letter explained that it had similarly been paid out as advance to another contractor working on the Castle and a copy of an explanation was attached. Mr. Barimah agreed in response to a question that the procedure for the disbursement of the money was not correct. But he insisted that there has been no loss to the state.

The Minister defended his predecessor, Kwamena Bartels, saying he was unjustifiably accused in the report for renovating four bungalows listed for sale. According to him, the Public Works Department prepared the list of bungalows to be rehabilitated and forwarded them to the then Minister, who set up a committee to oversee their renovation.

Apparently, the ministry’s Chief Technical Advisor, who chaired the committee, in his rush to execute the projects failed to identify the four buildings in contention. But he ordered a halt to their rehabilitation on realising the mistake and materials procured to complete work on those four were recovered and sent to the PWD.

The Works and Housing Minister suggested that the NPP government had saved the state much more money in its renovation and refurbishment exercise on nine state projects at 15 billion cedis compared to an approximated 21 billion cedis spent on renovating and refurbishing a State Guest House, known as the " Australia House", in year 2000 by the NDC government.