Posted
on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday,
August 30, 2017
Some of the faces
behind the $72 million Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT)
scandal that has set tongues wagging are beginning to unravel.
In what can be seen
as a clear case of conflict of interest, a source has told DAILY GUIDE that the head
of the troubled biometric project dubbed, Operation Business Suite (OBS) at
SSNIT is allegedly in a relationship with the vendor whose company was
contracted to install the OBS software.
The contract was
awarded to Perfect Business System/ Silver Lake Consortium in 2011 during the
Mills/Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration at an
initial bidding cost of $27,610,791, but by 2016 the total cost had ballooned
to $66 million and now $72 million, although the installed OBS software is not
running as expected.
The company was one
of the highest bidders but SSNIT settled on it, looking down on lower bidders
with potential value for money indicators.
Key Figures
The head of the OBS project
is John Hagan Mensah, a confidant of the immediate past SSNIT Director-General,
Ernest Thompson, who is said to be very close to Juliet Kramah, CEO of Perfect
Business System.
Unconfirmed sources believe
that the Perfect Business System boss has strong links with the powerful former
first family, and it is alleged that invoices emanating from the private firm
appeared to have gone through without any serious queries at the Trust.
Last Gap Payments
According to the
sources, on December 9, last year, Mr Ernest Thompson allegedly ordered the
payment of $9 million to Perfect Business Systems after the NDC had lost the
election in 2016 and was on its way out of power.
SSNIT allegedly
agreed to pay $4 per card that was to be issued to pensioners in the contract
but the amount increased miraculously to $7 and the Trust ended up paying the
private company $7.1 million for one million cards.
According to
sources, the whole project was not based on SSNIT’s requirement and that the
vendor reportedly came in with an already prepared provident fund system in
order to modify it for SSNIT - which runs social security.
Fund Modification
The provident fund
modification was not SSNIT’s idea but the decision of the project manager and
the private firm.
The sources said
when SSNIT requested for thumbprint devices that could scan all the 10 fingers
at once, the vendor provided single-finger devices and therefore, a contributor
registering needed to put the fingers on the device one at a time, thereby
wasting productive hours.
“When staff
complained, it was never provided. Meanwhile, SSNIT paid for the 10 devices at
a whopping cost,” source intimated.
Batch System
The source said the
vendor could not provide the OBS software but rather brought a batch system where
a client could only see his/her data reflecting after a day, saying “SSNIT
staff cannot work 24 hours because every staff is asked to sign out of the
system after 5pm else the whole SSNIT or that SSNIT branch cannot work the
following day.”
There were several outstanding
issues, according to the source, that needed to be sorted out regarding the OBS
project; and anytime the company was asked to correct a defect it allegedly
asked the Trust to pay hefty bills.
The source said
SSNIT caused the transfer of qualified staff who had deep insight into the OBS
project and brought in the Director-General’s alleged lackeys, including the
head of IT, Caleb K. Afaglo - who has been caught allegedly using fake degree.
Inflated Cost
Already, details have
emerged 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 $72 million.
It turned out that
SSNIT paid a whopping $500,000 for a product that costs $16,000 on the world market.
Crazy Deal
Bright B. Simons,
the Director of Development Research at IMANI-Ghana, a think-tank, and
Coordinator of the 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 that they bought it for more than $500,000. Are you crazy? We don't
lie about stuff like that...it is a catalogue matter," he said on Joy FM in Accra.
Legal Objection
It even emerged that
SSNIT’s Senior Corporate Law Officer, Jaezel Orleans-Lindsay, wrote to warn the
Trust’s management against certain aspect of the contract that was being
exploited by the private company.
“What it means is
that SSNIT will have to pay the annual SLA fee of $2,000,000. Immediately upon
signing the agreement (to cover for September 2104 to September 2015) and pay
another $2,000,000 in September this year - when in effect it would have just
received 9 months of service under the SLA instead of the contractual 2 years.
This is objectionable!” the lawyer said in a letter to his bosses on January
16, 2016.
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