Posted
on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Tuesday,
August 29, 2017
The man appointed to spearhead the
scandal-prone Social Security National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) multimillion
Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, Caleb Afaglo, reportedly has no
certificate.
The Economic and Organised Crimes
Office (EOCO) is investigating Mr. Afaglo, who heads SSNIT’s Management
Information Systems, for presenting fake documents for the top job.
According to EOCO sources, Mr Afaglo,
who claims to be a doctorate degree holder, does not have any such certificate
but got the plum job as General Manager MIS - under Joshua Alabi as Board
Chairman and Ernest Thompson as Director General.
He neither has a masters’
degree nor first degree, EOCO revealed.
The officer has therefore been
interdicted to allow EOCO to probe him.
The interdiction comes at a time when
there is public disaffection over SSNIT’s reckless spending of $72 million for software
acquisition for its operations.
Interestingly, the $72 million Operational
Business Suite (OBS) software procured from La-based Perfect Business System in Accra, is reportedly
not working to specification.
Perfect Business System is headed
by a certain Juliet Kramah, who is said to be close to the immediate past first
family.
The contract, awarded in 2012, was
to automate processes at the Trust.
The initial contract sum was $34 million but the Trust
ended up spending more within the period of four years.
According to the current Director-General of SSNIT,
Dr. John Ofori Tenkorang, the current state of the software leaves SSNIT with
more cost due to intermittent repairs and maintenance.
“The last time
a number was communicated to me, the number stood at $72 million but I can tell
you that the system is still not functioning as it should, and each time we
have to make revisions or get certain corrections made; these things are billed
as change requests which are also billable so until the system is fully
deployed and working properly, there is a chance that the number will be bigger
than what I’ve actually mentioned to you right now,” he told Citi
Fm in Accra.
Fraud
EOCO uncovered the fraud during
investigations into Afaglo’s crucial role in the scandal regarding the multi-million
dollar digitization contract.
According to EOCO, Mr Afaglo was
selected as the General Manager of the MIS because of his ‘impeccable’
credentials.
He had been sacked in previous
employments for allegedly presenting fake documents, the anti-graft agency has
said.
Inflated Cost
Details are emerging
about how officials of SSNIT inflated prices in the contracts for the automation
of the Trust’s systems - the total sum of which is now hovering around over $72
million.
It turned out that
SSNIT paid a whopping $500,000 for a product that costs $16,000 on the world
market.
Main Contractor
The contract was
awarded to Perfect Business System/ Silver Lake Consortium in 2011 during the
Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, but in 2016 the
total cost had ballooned to $66 million, and now $72 million, although the OBS
Software installed is not running as expected.
To make matters
worse, the server to the OBS Software, which was supposed to be a turnkey, is
sitting somewhere in Malaysia and additionally, SSNIT does not have the copyright
to the software, even after spending so much on the whole project.
Crazy Deal
Bright B. Simons,
the Director of Development Research at IMANI-Ghana and Coordinator of
mPedigree Network, has described the massive over-pricing as 'crazy deal.’
He said simple
checks of an IBM hardware sold on the market for $16,000 was bought for more
than $500,000.
"They want us
to believe they bought it for more than 500,000 dollars. Are you crazy? We
don't lie about stuff like that...it is a catalogue matter," he said on Joy FM in Accra yesterday.
Varied Contract
Mr Simons said Ghanaians
have cause to be angry because the public has been ripped off in the deals,
adding that per the terms of the tender bid, the contract sum was not to be
varied beyond 14%, but it ended up being varied by about 100%.
He explained that SSNIT
painted a picture of an ICT project that required some complex technical
components and expertise when they are simply ordinary components.
"A lot of the
challenge ...is that even though some of the items are perfectly mundane, they
are being priced as if some specialist skills were needed," he observed.
Bright Simons said
SSNIT's request to the project execution companies - Perfect Business Solutions
and Silverlake Consortium - was needless because it could have gotten all that
it needed by dealing directly with the manufacturer in Malaysia or simply
buying online.
Online Check
“Anybody can go
online, go to the producer's website and check the prices so you don't need a
system integrator with some specialist skills. There is no procurement specialty
in this thing,” he underscored.
Mr Simons also
faulted the technical ability of the company selected to integrate systems at
SSNIT, wondering, "Which of them had the experience to be system
integrators?"
He said Silverlake
deals in insurance management systems or provident fund management solutions,
and added that the contract could have been done by seven other companies, each
supplying a service based on their specialty.
"We had a
situation whereby people who are not very good at system integration taking a
contract, even though designed as a system integration contract, is packaged as
software development contract. And they are going around with sub-contractors
and padding the cost," Mr Simons lamented.
Bidding Companies
Prices quoted by 10 companies
that bid for the OBS Project - which was given to Perfect Business System/Silver
Lake Consortium – have been revealed.
Computer Information
System’s bid was $36,509,543; Superlock Technologies Limited (STL) quoted
$35,990,850; KPMG bid $32,168,621; BSystems/Technologies.Systech, the 4th
highest bidder, presented $31,908,441.
Krane International
put in a bid of $27,879,298; the ultimate winner, Perfect Business System/Silver
Lake Consortium, which was the 6th highest bidder, presented $27,610,791,
Cedar Consortium Systems, $23,873,93; Provision Consultants, $20,648,678;
Person Systems - the only company that quoted local currency - GH¢17,401,846
and Sambus Company Limited, $9,891,732.
Mr Simons expressed
concern about how a hardware retailer whom he said had ‘zero experience’
developing complex enterprise software system, won a multi-million dollar SSNIT
contract to furnish this incredibly complex organisation with a full-spectrum,
so-called, 'operational business suite', which system is supposed to encompass
every layer of the organisation's operational activities.
The rationale behind
the whole project was to reduce the amount of paper work involved in processing
pensions and cut the time spent by the already stressed retirees; but DAILY GUIDE understands it has rather
come to worsen the overhead costs of SSNIT.
NDC’s Fear & Panic
During the weekend,
the immediate-past SSNIT Director-General, Ernest Thompson, who supervised the
massive ‘rip-off,’ admitted on radio that the Trust was doing the project but was
not sure about the scope, adding that it was able to get some deliverables.
Already, two NDC
gurus seem to be robbing each other’s name in the mud in what appears to be a
desperate attempt to distance themselves from the stinky deal that has caused public
uproar.
The revelation of
the deal is apparently causing tension among members of the NDC, with Prof. Joshua
Alabi, describing the confusion among the rank and file of the NDC as a ‘dog
bites dog’ situation.
He appeared to have
shifted the blame on his predecessor, Kwame Peprah, under whose chairmanship of
the SSNIT Board the deal was cooked.
Mr Peprah, one-time Finance
Minister, who was jailed for causing financial loss to the state, rejected the
claim.
Details are even
emerging about how a lawyer for SSNIT objected to the inclusion of certain
aspects in the contract, which he said was going to have serious financial
consequences for the Trust.
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