Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Monday, May 23, 2016
It is emerging that the GH¢3.6 million paid to Smarttys Management
and Productions Ltd for branding 116 Metro Mass Transport (MMT) buses was actually
paid from the stricken Ghana Railways Development Authority account.
Incidentally, the Authority’s board is reportedly chaired by
Selassie Ibrahim’s husband, Ibrahim Adams, of Quality Grains fame.
Actress Sellasie Ibrahim owns Smarttys which was handpicked for the juicy
over-bloated contract.
Pressure group, OccupyGhana,
has described the GH¢3.6 million bus branding contract as a ‘sweetheart deal.’
The government intends to revamp the railways industry by using Ghana
Railways Development Authority funds for the construction of the Western
Corridor Rail under the Ministry of Transport.
It was also established that Smarttys Management and Productions Ltd executed the branding contract even before
the Ministry of Transport secured approval for the whole transaction.
OccupyGhana 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.
In the Smartty’s payment, which sent tongues wagging, the Ministry
of Transport, under then Minister, Dzifa Attivor, wrote to the Ministry of
Finance requesting that Smartty’s be paid for branding 116 buses for the MMT
and the ministry in turn directed the Controller and Accountant General to
process the payment.
The Controller in a letter of August 13, 2015 to the Bank of Ghana,
requested for transfer of funds into the Ministry of Transport’s Special
Operations Account (1018431540077) an amount of GH¢3,649,044.75 to enable the
ministry make payment to Smarttys for the contract.
According to OccupyGhana,
the infamous GH¢3.6 million bus branding deal was concluded some two clear
months after then minister 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.
OccupyGhana had issued a statement
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.”
The former minister was recently in the news asking the people of
the Volta Region - stronghold of the ruling 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 this
year’s elections.
‘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 colour by putting the faces of the president and former leaders on
them?” OccupyGhana queried.
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