NDC demands refund of COVID-19 risk allowance from Oppong Nkrumah and staff
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) said, the “unjustifiable” payments made to the Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah and his staff under the cloak of COVID allowances must be refunded. Mr. Sammy Gyamfi, told the press on Wednesday, 1 February 2023, that “it also emerged that at the height of the pandemic when frontline health workers complained about the lack of adequate PPE, with some even losing their lives, senior management and supporting staff of the Ministry of Information were busy paying themselves a total amount of GHS151,000.00 as ‘COVID-19 risk allowance’ without approval” Mr. Gyamfi revealed this at a press conference on the Auditor-general’s report on Ghana’s COVID-19 funds. “One may ask: what risk did these staff of the Ministry of Information, led by the Minister, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, face to warrant the sharing of such colossal amount of money among themselves as risk allowances without approval?” Read the NDC’s full statement below: A MOMENT OF TRUTH PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY THE NATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER OF THE NDC, COMRADE SAMMY GYMAFI ESQ. ON THE AUDITOR GENERAL’S REPORT ON GOVERNMENT’S COVID-19 EXPENDITURES. 1st February, 2023. Good morning, distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the media. We are highly pleased to have you here in your numbers, as we resume full duties under our ‘Moment of Truth’ series. We wish to assure you of our commitment to serve you with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in these engagements. Friends from the media, we should like to believe, that by now, you all in the media have sighted the report of the Auditor-General on a special audit conducted by his office into the COVID-19 expenditures of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government for the period, March 2020 to June 2022. In the very recent past, you have seen calls by the Minority in Parliament, the NDC and other well-meaning Ghanaians for accountability relative to COVID expenditures being met with fierce opposition from the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government. Indeed, you all will bear witness to the fact that, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government has been as scared and petrified about calls for an audit into COVID-19 expenditures, as an old lady would be over the mention of dry bones. Today, it has become apparent that behind that morbid fear of accountability, was an attempt to conceal from the Ghanaian people, what some of us have always known to be stinking rot, high-profile corruption, naked thievery and the misuse of COVID funds by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government. As it is often said, the chickens are finally come home to roost through this special audit report, which in our opinion is a highly charitable and watered down account of how COVID-19 funds have been expended by government. The report nonetheless reveals jaw-dropping details of how various officials and assigns of this government misapplied, misused and in some cases, wilfully looted the unprecedented resource envelope that accrued to the NPP-Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Auditor-General’s report reveals that, by the kind courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghana benefitted immensely from unprecedented inflows of funds from various sources, such as the World Bank, the International Monitory Fund, the Africa Development Bank, the European Union, the Contingency Fund and the sale of BOG-COVID-19 Bonds among others. These funds, the report estimates to amount to a total of Twenty-One Billion, Eight-hundred and forty-four million, One-hundred and eighty-nine thousand, one-hundred and eighty-five Ghana cedis, twenty-four pesewas (GHS 21,844,189,185.24). We must emphasise here that this amount excludes other COVID-related funds such as the $1 Billion facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), being Ghana’s share of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to boost post-COVID economic recovery of member countries. The Auditor-General’s estimate also excludes the over GHS62 million that accrued to the COVID-19 Trust Fund which was established by an Act of Parliament to help mobilise funds to complement government’s fight against the pandemic. These notwithstanding, the report observed that out of the total amount of GHS21.8 billion that accrued to the Government of Ghana, only GHS11, 750,683,059.11 was spent on COVID-19 activities while the rest of the money (precisely GHS10, 093,506,126.13) was spent on so-called “budget support”. The animal call “budget support” as we would later realise, was the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government’s euphemism for their reckless and wasteful election-driven expenses which resulted in an unprecedented budget deficit of 15.7% in the year 2020. We shall now discuss fifteen (15) key highlights of the shocking revelations contained in the Auditor General’s report on government’s COVID-19 expenditures: Firstly, the Auditor-General’s report details how the Ministry of Health paid a total of US$120,192,379.80 to UNICEF for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines but only received vaccines valued at US$38,322,000.00, with a whopping $81.8 million of the transaction unaccounted for. This, ladies and gentlemen, raises serious concerns given the history of the current Minister of Health, under whose watch Ghana entered into the dubious Sputnik V vaccine contract and paid a colossal amount of money for vaccines which were never supplied. It would be recalled how the government of Ghana, led by the Health Minister, Kweku Agyemang Menu, chose to pay $19 per dose of Sputnik V vaccine through a phony middleman called Sheik Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum of the UAE, when Ghana could have easily bought these vaccines directly from the Russian government at a unit cost of $10 or less. Fellow countrymen and women, we in the NDC are very concerned, that despite the dire economic crises confronting the nation, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government has neglected and/or failed to retrieve the outstanding amount of $81.8 million, which could have been channeled into other developmental ventures to ameliorate the plight of suffering Ghanaians. Secondly, the Auditor-General’s report reveals how the Ministry of Health recklessly paid an amount of GHS10,309,919.94 as premium for Special Life Insurance Cover for 10,000 frontline Health Workers without any Life Insurance Policy document and beneficiary list. We find it intriguing, how such a huge life insurance premium was arrived at without a beneficiary list detailing names of beneficiaries,