Money Swine! Assemblies blow $100m on consultancy

Members of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee have expressed disgust at findings that some Metropolitan and Municipal heads have directed a large chunk of money meant for sanitation into consultancy services.

The Heads in Accra, Kumasi, Tema, Sekondi-Takoradi and Tamale municipalities have been asked to justify the expenditure of almost 100 million dollars on consultancy.

The money was granted them under the second Urban Environmental Sanitation Project. The money was to be channeled into a number of priority areas -drainage, community upgrading, sanitation, strengthen assembly.

But at the committee sitting Monday, Deputy Local Government Minister Baba Jamal explained that the funding agencies appointed their own consultants for the Urban Environmental Sanitation Project. Government, he said, therefore had no choice but to pay the consultants and in foreign currencies.

Joy News correspondent Elton John Brobbey reported the Parliamentarians did not find the explanation satisfactory enough.

The Tamale Metropolitan Assembly was however singled out for praise. The Director of the Assembly, Stephen Akewtei, explained his Assembly gave some landlords money to build toilet facilities in their homes and also invested part of their allocation to upgrade infrastructure in the metropolis.