Fraud At Ghana Water Company

Serious discrepancies have been dectected in a Computerisation Project for the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL). The company paid over $430,000 to two companies to maintain its non-operational Management Information System project. This was after it had paid another $210,000 for the drawing up of a master plan for the project and another $80,000 for the first phase of the project, which never took off, to Omari Computek. This came to light during a committee hearing set up by government to probe alleged finanacial malfeasance in the company.

It also came out that about $172,000 out of the $430,000 was paid to a company by name Tara Systems for the maintenance of the project and another $73,000 for run-time module for 10 out of the 15 sites of customer management software installation. Even though the equipment for the project had been brought down by the GWCL as at December 2000, none of the company’s sites planned for computerisation is operational and the projects have been abondoned.

The Managing Director of the GWCL, Mr. Charles Adjei told the committee that a Technical Appraisal Committee (TAC) was set up to investigate the project and advise the board of the company accordingly. After investigations, the TAC asked the Board to abrogate the contract. The board was also advised to recover the monies from Tara Systems Limited and Omari Computek.

The Managing Director of Omari Computek however denied being paid the maintenanace fee. He tendered to the committtee for study, a list of payments made to him.