National Cathedral project has not been suspended - Executive Director

The Executive Director of the National Cathedral Secretariat, Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah, has said that the project has not been suspended.

He explained that contrary to widespread claims that the National Cathedral project has been suspended, that is not true.

Instead, he said the project has rather been put on hold.

“I want to stress that, there’ve been issues that the project has been suspended; it hasn’t. The construction has stalled but the National Cathedral is almost an institution; it’s going to be one of the largest institutions. So, the work continues on a daily basis,” he said.

He made this known when the Board of Trustees of the National Cathedral provided a public update on the status of the project.

Earlier, GhanaWeb reported on how the National Cathedral Secretariat confirmed that the project had stalled since early August, citing a lack of funds.

The Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who had been at the heart of calls for financial and corporate scrutiny of the project, mentioned months earlier that work had stalled.

His view was corroborated by media outfits that visited the site at the time and found that no work was ongoing.

The Executive Director of the project, Dr. Paul Opoku-Mensah, on Tuesday, August 30, confirmed the suspension of work despite the continued presence of contractors and their staff on site.

“We have the contractors and their staff on site, but the work has been suspended. We are hoping that within the next couple of weeks, as part of our fundraising and other initiatives we can begin work again... our ability to complete this work keenly depends on Ghanaians supporting it,” he told a delegation that had come to donate towards the project.

He rallied the Christian faithful to ramp up their support for the project, stressing that it was the surest way to raise needed funds to complete the project.

“The money might be big in terms of volume but if indeed we have 21 million Christians and a million can give us GH₵100 a month for a year, we can easily complete this in time.

“I refuse to believe that we can’t get a million Ghanaians out of the 21 million Christians to support this. I still have faith in the Ghanaian and I am confident that we will do this,” he added.

In the last few months, Ablakwa has revealed documents proving that the government authorized payments of GHC25 million (May 2022) and US$25 million (November 2020) as seed money towards the project, amounts he insists did not get required Parliamentary approval.

Ghana’s leading digital news platform, GhanaWeb, in conjunction with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, is embarking on an aggressive campaign which is geared towards ensuring that parliament passes comprehensive legislation to guide organ harvesting, organ donation, and organ transplantation in the country.

AE/BB