Amidu Issahaku Chinnia, the Deputy Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources and MP for Sissala East, has said Ghanaians must commend President Nana Akufo-Addo for acting swiftly on the Fourth Estate’s ‘The GHC3 billion Lie’ documentary that unearthed irregularities in the contract between GRA and SML.
According to him, although aspects of the deal had some procedural breaches, it was in the interest of the state as regards revenue mobilisation.
Commenting on the release of the full KPMG audit report on the GRA-SML deal on TV3’s The Key Points programme on Saturday, Mr Chinnia, among other things, justified KPMG’s failure to engage Mr Manesseh Azure in its investigations.
“When you look at reports that came up it was established that the need for an entity to monitor the system was a necessity but the contracting procedure of course, has some challenges when you look at excerpts of the report that we have.”
“I feel that we must commend the President for taking Manasseh’s report and acting on it, he said, adding that “all what Manasseh wanted to expose about the deal was contained in his expose.”
According to him, the documentary in itself was enough evidence for the accounting and auditing firm, KPMG to rely on, saying that the content of the documentary, “is just like talking to him [Manasseh]”.
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He added, “it is not the case that his opinions and recommendations were not taken into account because the basis for this whole investigation emanated from his investigations.”
“And so certainly the President acted on the basis of Manesseh’s investigations that revealed certain things that were untoward towards the state in this deal. We should commend the President because when this matter came up he actually stopped the agreement,” he stated.
President Akufo-Addo in January this year, commissioned the accounting and auditing firm to audit the contract following an expose by the Fourth Estate’s documentary titled ‘The GHC3 billion lie’ released in December 2023. The documentary unearthed some irregularities in the agreement between GRA and SML.
KPMG submitted its full report to the President on March 27, which was later released to the public by the presidency on Wednesday, May 22, after several calls from anti-corruption civil society organisations.
According to the audit findings, SML received a total of GH¢1,061,054,778.00 from 2018 to date [January 2, 2024] whilst partially fulfilling its obligations.
More details from the report have revealed damning irregularities in a multi-year contract agreement between the state entity and SML.
