Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
It is turning out that the Metro
Mass Transport buses were branded by Smarttys Management and Productions Ltd -
owned by actress Selassie Ibrahim - at a ridiculous cost of GH¢3.6 million even
before the Ministry of Transport secured approval for the whole transaction.
According to pressure group
OccupyGhana, the infamous GH¢3.6 million bus branding deal was concluded some
two clear months after then Minister of Transport, Dzifa Aku Attivor, had given
the contract to Smarttys before the ministry wrote to the Public Procurement
Agency (PPA) for approval for sole-sourcing, which is in clear breach of the rules
and regulations pertaining to procurement by the government or state
institutions.
The former minister was recently
in the news asking the people of the Volta Region, stronghold of the National
Democratic Congress (NDC), to retain the party in power in order to save her
from going to jail if the New Patriotic Party (NPP) is given the mandate to
rule the country in the November elections.
The pressure group has been putting
in the public domain detailed analysis of the contract after it obtained it
from the Attorney General (AG), following receipt of the contract documents.
It had issued a notice to sue
the government if the AG refused to hand over details of the contract.
The group issued a news release on
Sunday saying in summary that “On 28th July, 2015, some two months after
Smarttys had completed the branding of the buses, the Chief Director of the
Ministry of Transport, signing on behalf of the minister, then wrote to the
Public Procurement Agency (PPA) for approval to sole-source the branding
contract to Smarttys.”
‘Sweetheart’ Deal
Describing the whole contract as
a ‘sweetheart deal’, OccupyGhana said the Ministry of Transport gave four
reasons for not opening the contract up for competitive bidding and said “those
reasons, of course, did not include the fact that Smarttys had already
concluded the branding.”
The group said the ministry gave
some bizarre reasons, including urgency, major threat to national security and deployment
of the buses as the reasons for solely awarding the contract to Smarttys.
Branding Policy
According to OccupyGhana, it did
not make sense for the ministry to hold that the buses had been purchased under
a social intervention programme and the colour code which had been selected for
the buses was not consistent with the current branding policy of the ministry.
Surcharging Importer
“Why would the ministry with a
branding policy on colours order buses in allegedly wrong colours and then use
almost $1m of our monies just to change their colours? Why was the person who
ordered the buses in allegedly the wrong colours not surcharged with the cost
of simply re-spraying them?
“And when have Ghanaians been
bothered about the colour in which a bus is sprayed? What was the original
colour and what made that colour so repugnant that more of our monies had to be
spent to change it? And how do you change the colours by putting the faces of
the president and former leaders on them?” OccupyGhana queried.
Childish Lie
The group described the ‘urgency
reason’ as “childish, empty, vacuous, corrupt and silly lie that the PPA should
have seen through, unless, the PPA, in spite of the good intentions that led to
its establishment, has at best become a pliable and malleable tool in the hands
of political actors, or at worst, an active participant in corrupt
transactions.”
No Security Threat
On the issue of ‘major threat to
national security’, OccupyGhana said it was a palpable lie because the buses had
already been branded in May for early release and as at the date of writing to
the PPA on July 28, “there was absolutely no threat (real or perceived) to the
security of the nation.”
OccupyGhana posited, “The only
reason why the buses had not been released for operations to begin was that the
branding had been done illegally: Smarttys had not been paid, the MOT was now
seeking to use illegal means to cover its tracks, and PPA had to prove itself a
mere rubber stamp so that Smarttys would get paid,” saying, “but dates don't
lie.”
Pre-Arrangement
The group asked, “And did the
PPA cross-check this fatuous lie with National Security? Note, once again, that
the PPA approved of the sole-sourcing within 24 hours of receiving this letter.
Everything appears to have been pre-arranged.”
On the reason for the deployment
of the buses, OccupyGhana said the ministry had insisted, “Smarttys and
Smarttys alone had to do the branding because the ministry wanted to ‘deploy
the buses by the end of August 31, 2015.’
“The truth, however, is that the
buses had already been branded. There was, therefore, no other let or hindrance
to deploying the buses even as at 28th July, 2015 when this letter was written
for PPA approval.”
Heat On PPA
The group did not spare the PPA
which approved the strange deal, saying that if the agency had been diligent,
it would have realised that “the buses had already been branded; that for which
approval was now being sought, had been done.
“Let us be charitable and assume
that the PPA indeed verified the claim; what did they see that led to them
granting the sole-sourcing approval within 24 hours?”
Fallouts From The Deal
The GH¢3.6 million, being the
cost of the rebranding to the taxpayer, set tongues wagging last year, leading
to the resignation of Dzifa Attivor as Minister for Transport.
The government later said it had
ordered Smarttys to refund about GH¢1.5 million, being the excess amount on the
branding cost, which the company claimed it had since refunded.
Mrs Attivor caused public
outrage when she recently asked Voltarians to retain the NDC in government
because she feared that if the NPP won the November elections, she and other sitting
ministers from the region would be jailed.
She said specifically that during
the reign of the NPP, it jailed appointees who were from the Volta Region and that
it could repeat it if it won the impending elections.
Her political opponents have
interpreted her ethnic outburst to mean an admission of guilt in the manner in
which she awarded contracts during her tenure at the ministry.
No comments:
Post a Comment