NDC blows GH¢1bn on GYEEDA

It has now emerged that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration has spent well over GH¢1billion (¢10trillion) on the corruption-riddled youth employment programme, the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA).

The money was spent between 2009 and June 2013, the period in which the NDC government has been in power, even though a lot of the youth under the programme had not been paid for several months.

The stinky report indicted six staff members of GYEEDA for alleged corrupt practices and called for their prosecution.

Approximately GH¢786million of this amount was said to have been paid to Service Providers (SP), who were contracted to run various employment modules under GYEEDA with an amount of GH¢259million outstanding.

This is contained in the report of the five-member impact assessment and review committee tasked by the Minister of Youth and Sports, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah to investigate alleged maladministration and financial indiscipline at the National Youth Employment (NYEP) which has been named GYEEDA.

Report Out

The report, after government refusal to release it, was yesterday made available by the Young Patriots, a group affiliated to the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The findings of the committee were based on figures provided from the finance unit of the programme, which is now battling for a lifeline.

This, according to the report, meant that “government would have incurred at least one billion and forty five thousand Ghana Cedis (GH¢ 1,000,000,045.00) as cost to SPs alone from 2009 up to 30 June 2013.”

In spite of that, it was uncovered that “several of the contracts between GYEEDA and these Services Providers lacked basic standard elements of contracts such as critical dates including commencement and termination dates.”

Doubtful Contracts

Apart from that, tenure and clearly defined deliverables were said to be missing from some of the contracts, while “there is lack of coherence in different parts of the MoUs such as the preambular statements and the operating parts.”

The report revealed that some MoUs did not have adequate provisions to protect national resources let alone provide key performance indicators for measuring success, insisting that “the use of MoUs with legally binding agreements should govern such relationships suggests a limited or absolute non-involvement of the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice in the execution of many of these contracts.”

It was also observed that the use of single source procurement processes for all the modules contracted under GYEEDA was either as a result of the non-involvement of the Office of the Attorney or due to receiving uninformed and inadequate legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

The use of single or sole sourcing has virtually become an established practice of the ruling NDC in strict violation of the country’s procurement law, making it a criminal offence.

Procurement Issues

That notwithstanding, the committee realised that procurement of the services of Service Providers in the implementation of modules was mainly supply driven, an indication that “the initiatives from conceptualising a module, planning and execution were largely controlled by SPs.”

This, the report said was because “each module was approved without recourse to any strategic plan broadly providing direction on the initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling and the closing of the modules.”

The five-member committee which was chaired by Ferdinand Gunn with the likes of Tuinese Edward Amuzu, Randolph Nsor-Ambala, Kwami Edem Senanu and Mike K. Gabah as members, therefore asked that “in future, the development of modules by GYEEDA should be demand-driven, firmly supported by a strategic plan from which a procurement plan of GYEEDA would have been developed and preferably bottom-up based on issues identified at the district or local level.”

Recommendations

In view of this, the committee stressed the need to make unsolicited proposals an exception to the rule, noting with emphasis “where circumstances, after the exercise of due discretion, warrant the development of a module from an unsolicited proposal, for the avoidance of doubt, the procurement processes must satisfy the strict requirements for the single source procurement under the Public Procurement Act.”

This, they said was in view of the fact that the “MOUs contain provisions in breach of the 1992 Constitution and legislation such as the Financial Administration Act.

Young Patriots Jabs Mahama

The Young Patriots accused President John Dramani Mahama for lack of commitment to fighting corruption, Awudu Mahama reported.

According to the group, President Mahama’s referral of the ‘scandalous’ GYEEDA report to a committee led by senior advisor to the President, P.V. Obeng, was a calculated attempt to shield officials in his administration.

Three weeks after the presidency had received the GYEEDA report, President Mahama is yet to make the contents of the report public to enable Ghanaians and civil society to take a critical look at it and engender public debate on it.

A release signed and issued yesterday by four members of the group, Richard Nyamah, Hopeson Adorye, Fred Amankwah Sarfo and John Kumah said the President’s move was tantamount to “watering down and white washing” the report.

Government had announced that the Ferdinand Gunn’s committee report on the operations of the GYEEDA had been handed to a team led by P.V. Obeng for review.

Opposition political parties, including the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) as well as anti-corruption agencies have condemned the move, describing it as a ploy to cover-up alleged acts of corruption contained in the report.

PP has already indicated its preparedness to hit the streets over massive corruption in government.

The Young Patriots said Ghanaians needed to know the raw content of the original report to enable them to make sense of any other report that would come out from Mr. Obeng and his team.

The NPP group is calling for probe into the role played by current ministers and deputy ministers in the Mahama administration.

“We also call for further probe into the role played by current ministers and deputy ministers who for the sake of protecting the Presidency have been willy-nilly omitted from the report,” the Young Patriots emphasised.

The group said, “On the basis of the lack of courage by the President to publish the report due to its scandalous content which has the capacity to undermine the President and his Presidency, we the Young Patriots have attached, with this publication, a true certified copy of the report which we are sending to all media houses.”

The group was hopeful that the media will disseminate the content of the report by inviting professionals, academicians, think tanks and ordinary Ghanaians to thoroughly debate how GYEEDA was set up by the governments as a conduit for channelling tax payers’ money into private pockets and also to finance party activities.

“We pray the media to do this with no holds barred and no person or government let off the hook. Ghana is a rich nation and has no business being poor and go begging.

“It is poor leadership, in the nature of GYEEDA that is wrecking our dear nation,” the group stated.

It also called on the police to invite all individuals and companies cited in the report for questioning with the aim of investigating and prosecuting them.

“Our state institutions must be seen to be working and actually working without taking instructions from any individual or group of persons,” the group stated adding that, “This is the only way they can regain public confidence.”