Audit GH¢54.3m lockdown food – Group to Auditor-General

Pressure group STRANEK has called on the office of the Auditor-General to audit the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection with regard to the expenditure of GH¢54.3 million on food for the vulnerable during the three-week lockdown of Accra and Kumasi, as part of earlier efforts to control the spread of COVID-19.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo first imposed a two-week partial lockdown on Tema, Accra Kasoa and Kumasi in April 2020.

He extended it by a week later on.

During that period, the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Protection was directed to feed the poor.

Delivering the mid-year budget review in Parliament on Thursday, 23 July 2020, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta disclosed that the Ministry spent GH¢54.3 million on the food packs and cooked meals distributed to more than 400,000 people in the cities within the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions.

In a letter addressed to the office of the Auditor-General on Monday, 27 July 2020, and co-signed by its Executive Director Nii Tettey Tetteh and Director of Gender and Social Policy, Adwoa Tima Boafo, STRANEK appealed to the A-G to investigate how the Ministry spent “a colossal amount of GH¢54.3 million on dry food packs and cooked meals during the three-week lockdown period”.

“We humbly request you to specially audit the amount spent on the COVID-19 food by the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Protection, since the country has to ascertain, in detail, what actually went into that amount”.