PIAC petitions Auditor General to investigate ‘shoddy’ oil-funded projects

The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) has called on the office of the Auditor General to investigate non-existent and poorly executed oil-funded projects by contractors.

A 2013 report on the management of Petroleum revenues by PIAC, disclosed that an amount of GH¢372.07 million out of the GH¢543.78 million of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) representing 68.42 percent was spent on roads and other infrastructure.

The report further said the remaining GH¢287.20 million representing 35 percent of the ABFA allocation was spent on several infrastructural sectors including energy, education, water, housing, security and health.

However, the Committee revealed at a press conference in Accra today that a whopping 50% of some of the projects funded from the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) were “non-existent” while a sizeable number were “poorly executed.”

The discovery was made when PIAC, in 2016 and 2017, embarked on the inspection of projects in various regions across the country, namely the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Ashanti, Eastern, Greater Accra, and Volta Regions.

Dr. Steve Manteaw told www.ghanaweb.com about “a particular case of the Duuri Dam where an amount of about GHC58,000 was allocated for rehabilitation works. The allocation was done in 2014, but as at 2016 when we visited the project site, nothing had happened. The project was actually non-existent.”

Similarly, “over fifty percent of school projects inspected showed signs of serious deterioration in less than three years after completion” including a six-unit classroom block Apedwa SDA primary school in the East Akim District of the Eastern region which has begun to sink due to poor siting and shoddy work.

The PIAC Chairman said his outfit has written to the Auditor General to look into the findings while calling on the Finance Ministry to do a follow up of oil-funded projects as well as engage beneficiaries and local authorities in the project selection and implementation.

He was of the hope that the Auditor General will do a thorough investigation on “Ghost Projects” which have resulted in substantial cost variations running into millions of Ghana cedis with associated effects on value for money and bring perpetrators to book.