Bogus Procurement 'Crash Lands' Ghanair

...Engineering Dept. cited

What actually accounts for the present tartered condition of the national airline, Ghanair, continues to be a mind-boggling topic to many; one area that has brought the airline into its current situation is unmistakably the Engineering Department.

Some top officials of the department some years back engaged in reckless procurements which ran into hundreds of millions of cedis without due diligence.

One name that kept popping up in the procurement saga is Mr. Joe Brown, the then Deputy Director in-charge of Engineering and now second in-command of the Management Task force of the airline.

About four years ago, Joe Brown single-handedly and without caution procured some equipment which cost almost ?500million.

The equipment was not budgeted for and is currently lying idle at Hangar 4 at Kotoka International Airport. Sometime in1999, Brown entered into an agreement with A.J. Walters, a UK-based company, to procure Bead Braker and Wheel Oven which cost the airline over $ 60,000 with ten percent delivery charges.

What has triggered off questions about this procurement is the fact that it was done without any preceding provision or allocation in the budget of the airline in that particular year for the purchase of that equipment.

Another sad aspect of the deal is that the equipment had turned out to be a white elephant, lying at hanger because the airline had no technical men to put the pieces to work, Chronicle has learnt.

Bead Braker is used for the manufacturing of aircraft tyres and this particular one purchased by Brown was supposedly meant for the manufacturing of DC 10 tyres, even though Ghanair has not set up any unit for the tyre manufacturing.

After manufacturing the tyres they are then put into a wheel oven to harden it for use.

Chronicle has gathered that during the days of Mr. Emmanuel Quartey, Jnr., whose administration had led the airline into its current disastrous situation, he arrogated powers to some people and this gave them enough room to engage in reckless ventures without due process.

"During Quartey's era the airways became a 'fat cow' which he and his boys milked without looking over their shoulders," an aggrieved worker who could not come to terms with the development in the airline lamented.

This and other issues informed Chronicle to call Brown some weeks ago, but he refused to speak to us saying we had already published the engines story.