The Elusive Miss Renee Woodard, also known as Miss JR Cotton, the brain behind the infamous quality grain scandal, tried pulling a fast one on the NPP Government early this year when she wrote a letter to Major Courage Quality requesting for protocol arrangement to present ten bags of rice to the President J. A. Kufuor.
The letter which bore the letter head of Rice Management Technology Incorporated, 1485 Spyglass, Hill Drive, Atlanta, Georgia rather than Quality Grain Limited, also requested for press coverage for the presentation which by JR.
Cotton's calculation would have meant the new government had accepted her tactical investment drive.
This revelation came to light when the Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Nana Akufo-Addo and Major (rtd) Courage Quashigah, Minister of Food and Agriculture, jointly addressed the press on the quality grain issue.
Nana Akufo-Addo slammed the past government for guaranteeing loan running into millions of dollars to Quality Grain Company Limited, a company that arguably only exists in name and has never won a contract to grow rice at half the quantity the Ghana Government expected of it.
He observed that contrary to impression created by the NDC Government through media hypes, Miss. Cotton was not an investor as it became evident she was only in partnership with others to get the lucrative contract, adding that Quality Grain Company Limited was not even registered with the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre.
Nana Akufo-Addo, who is also the MP for Abuakwa, said on August 12,1998, that was six days before a media hype on Ghana Television suggesting that all was going on well with the project, management of Quality Grain attempted registering the company with the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre but couldn't because the company lacked the requisite qualification for registration.
Continuing, he said somewhere in 1999, management of Quality Grain threatened abandoning the whole project because of what it perceived as Government not fulfilling some promises it made towards the project.
Government was therefore compelled to release more funds from the national kitty towards the project and also guaranteed more loan in the year 2000, in addition to assuming more responsibilities, including putting staff working on the project on the Ministry of Finance payroll.
He stressed that, realising the potential loss to the state, then Vice President met with the Chinese ambassador at the Castle in March last year and requested Chinese assistance for the project.
Major Courage Quashigah (Rtd) could not hide his desperation when he said "Quality Grain has given us more food for thought than food for the stomach."
He bemoaned the fact that farming equipment worth millions of dollars was left at the mercy of the weather while they could be used to increase agricultural productivity.
"There's no document covering the cost of numerous equipment left," the talented ranger said.
Stressing his determination to put the equipment to good use, Major Quashigah estimated the annual rice requirement of the country at 400,000 metric tonnes.
He said currently, the country spends $US 100 million to import rice annually for consumption and hoped this would be minimised with more efficient administration of the agriculture industry.
