¢100 Billion Relief Items Missing

*Two NPP MPs In A Tussle Over Who Got What*

The Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) has disclosed that the organization is having difficulties tracing relief items worth about ¢100 billion purchased under three Ministers of Interior who served in the previous administration.

Mr. Kofi Portuphy, the NADMO boss, told Herald that the purchases took place during the tenures of Messrs Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Kwamena Bartels and Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, who at various times served at the Ministry of Interior as ministers.

He did not accuse the ex-Ministers of stealing or carting the relief items away, but insisted that the purchases were unusually done at the ministry level instead of allowing NADMO headquarters to purchase the items which have gone missing.

Mr. Portuphy made the revelation when he was reached by The Herald with documents indicating that the Member of Parliament for Akyem Abuakwa North, Prof. Samuel Amoako then a parliamentary candidate on NPP ticket milked the Eastern Regional NADMO Store in Koforidua dry during the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary electioneering campaign.

Reports are that Prof. Amoako fetched the relief items, estimated at several millions of cedis, in the name of East Akyem Municipal NADMO office and shared it with his colleague candidate from Abuakwa South, Atta Akyea to bribe electorates to vote for them as well as the then NPP Presidential candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo.

Available records reveal the relief items as boxes of mosquito coil, 153 bags of rice, 25 bags of maize, 3 bags of beans,2 bags of sugar, 270 cutlasses, 72 bottles of cooking oil, 16 plastic buckets, 27 pieces of mattress and 16 blankets, 37 pieces of plastic plates, hundreds of mosquito nets and cooking utensils.

Other items include 3 bales of used clothes, 37 plastic cups, 22 plastic bowls, 48 pieces of lanterns, 18 pockets of roofing sheet, boxes of nails, 31 wellington boots and 22 pieces of poly mats and six cartons of key soap.

Prof. Amoako, now MP for the Abuakwa North Constituency is specifically mentioned to have stormed NADMO Regional Stores for the items on December 16 and 30, 2008 respectively, saying he was taking them on behalf of the East Akyem Municipal Assembly. However, the items did not reach the municipal stores, one of the documents signed by the Regional NADMO Coordinator, Mr. T.K. Hussein said.

Interestingly, at the time the relief items were given out, there had not been any disaster in the East Akyem Municipality to justify the requests made by the two MPs. It is, therefore, not clear why the MPs forwarded a requisition and subsequently collected the items worth hundreds of millions of cedis.

Prof. Amoako in a telephone interview with The Herald last Saturday admitted going for the huge items from the NADMO Eastern Regional Stores and said he gave them out to people in the constituency as relief items for various disasters they had suffered.

He mentioned a certain “Osonoba” as the one who gave him the relief items, and said those meant for Abuakwa South Constituency which he collected on Atta Akyea’s behalf were dutifully handed over to Atta Akyea personally by himself (Prof. Amoako).

He denied reports that there had not been a disaster at the time he went for the relief items from the stores of NADMO.

Interestingly, however, Atta Akyea vehemently denied ever receiving any NADMO items from anybody at the time for distribution.

“I don’t remember receiving any items from anybody in the name of NADMO and sharing it”, he told The Herald when he was also reached on the phone with Prof. Amoako’s claim that he personally gave him the NADMO items meant for disaster victims in the constituency he was going to lead.

Atta Akyea described himself as a lawyer who was a novice in politics at the time and had no clout then to go before anybody for such items to distribute for campaign, and said he was hearing about the issue for the first time. Mr. Portuphy told The Herald that although the Eastern Regional NADMO office was yet to draw his attention to the items which were released to the parliamentary candidate, NADMO records show that the situation is widespread.

According to him, since last year when he took over as NADMO boss, he had being making frantic efforts to know the whereabouts of the ¢100 billion relief items but to no avail. Even vital documents which could have assisted him in locating the items have also been expunged from NADMO’s records, he disclosed.

He further revealed that when he took over, he was told that the items were in a warehouse in Tema, but they were not there when he visited with some NADMO officials and there were also no documents to prove as to whether the items have been allocated to disaster victims.

In some cases the purchases were done but the items cannot be traced, and in other cases the purchases were not done at all yet monies went out of the system.