20 Million Cedis Phone Bill in 4 Months!

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has been slapped with a bill of ?20.2 million for telephone calls made from the residence of the Chief Executive in just four months. The obviously high bill is causing embarrassment to the Assembly with the Metropolitan Coordinating Director, Isaac Adjovu, calling for an investigation.

Adjovu’s demand for investigation follows denial by the Chief Executive, Solomon Ofei Darko, that most of the calls emanated from his household. Darko who vehemently denied knowledge about the numbers that appeared on the bills, in an interview with the Statesman on Tuesday, said he has commenced personal investigation into the bill scandal.

“Somebody is playing a funny trick on my phone,” he complained.

According to the Chief Executive, he knows all the international numbers shown on the itemized bills. The foreign calls, which took a greater chunk of the bills, were made to the United Kingdom, United States, Senegal and Canada. But of all the numbers, phone number 44 790 4922097, which The Statesman learnt is a London mobile phone number was particularly striking as it appeared on the November bill 49 times, consuming ?5.1 million, that is an average of two a day.

The same scenario is repeated in the January bill with the same number appearing 31 times. There was a consistent call to the number from January 1 to January 8 registering 29 calls within the eight days that is an average of 4 1/2 calls per day. For instance, the trends of calls show that on 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th January, five calls each were made to the number.

However, when The Statesman attempted calling the number to verify the identity of the caller, the call could not get through, raising suspicion that the owner of the phone had put it off.

Investigation conducted by the Statesman into the AMA’s payments of its Chief Executive residence phone bills revealed that as at July 2001, before Darko took occupancy of the residency, the Assembly had settled all phone bills leaving a balance of ?14,475 cedis with Ghana Telecom.

However, things started taking a new turn when the new Chief Executive moved into the residence in the middle of September, with the bill rising to ?546,442. In October, the AMA was billed ?6.42 million but suddenly rose to ?12.93 million in November. This jumped to ?20.72 million cedis in December.

However, the Assembly paid ?2.77 million in January. The bill shot up to ?20.3 million when the January bill was added. Prior to the bill scandal, the highest the previous Chief Executive, Samuel Addokwei Addo, had consumed was ?1.36 million and that was in October 1999.

This excessive use of the phone prompted the Chief Estate Officer’s comments that the MCE should be prevailed upon to use his duty post facility judiciously to avoid auditors queries. But Darko denied that none of the questionable calls was from him, stating that he was ready to pursue the matter to any length.

The Statesman investigation at Ghana Telecom, however, revealed that the Assembly has not made any formal complaint.

Ghana Telecom sources said until a formal complaint is made, nothing could be done. They insisted the calls were initiated from the residence of the AMA boss.