1.Vanderpuije in trouble; summoned over renaming of hockey pitch.The Chief of Staff, Prosper Bani has directed Accra Mayor Alfred Vanderpuije to immediately reverse the renaming of the national hockey pitch.Mr. Vanderpuije was summoned to answer for his action following an avalanche of flak against the name-change.In a statement issued by the Presidency on Thursday July 25, 2013, Mr. Bani said he ordered the reversal of the name-change because he was not informed about the move.The Mayor said the pitch was to be named after late President John Mills who was a staunch hockey player. However there have been countless flak against the Mayor for taking the unilateral decision to change the name of the pitch from ‘Theodosia Okoh’ hockey pitch to ‘Atta Mills’ hockey pitch. 2.Rot at GYEEDA: Gross breach of procurement laws through unsolicited proposals All proposals leading to award of GYEEDA contracts are unsolicited and the process of awarding the contracts breaches the Public Procurement Law. This is according to the report of the ministerial committee set up to investigate activities of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency, GYEEDA. The report says GYEEDA does not call for proposals. The service providers initiate their own proposals and the contracts are awarded without regard to the Public Procurement act. The report states that ‘all proposals submitted to GYEEDA are unsolicited. There is no evidence of any competitive process leading to the selection of any of the beneficiaries.” It says “single source procurement under the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) is regulated by section 40.” It says and I quote: “Under section 40 of Act 663, a single source procurement may be undertaken by the Procurement entity with the approval of the Board of the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) after some stringent requirements.” These requirements the report says include “restricted availability of the goods, works or services, or the exclusive right of the single source over the goods, works or services and the absence of a reasonable alternative.” The report says “there is no evidence of approval by the PPA for most of the procurement of SPs by single sourcing.” It says “even when the PPA Board attempted to approve the procurement of ACI Construction Ltd with GHS 48,852,000.00 at stake, in a letter dated 13th December, 2012, the PPA went under section 72(5)(c) of the Act 663. Section 72(5)(c) provides “the procurement entity may select consultants by inviting proposals from a single consultant where it is a follow-up assignment.” ACI Construction cannot qualify as consultants and the contract is certainly not a follow up one. There was no original or initial contract regularly obtained through the normal procurement processes between GYEEDA and ACI.” The MOUs contain provisions in breach of the 1992 Constitution and legislation such as the Financial Administration Act, 1993 (Act 654). For instance, several MOUs (especially those in connection with AGAMS Group of companies including Rlg, Craftpro and Asongtaba) contain interest free loans granted and disbursed to the SPs without recourse to Parliament as required by the Constitution and the Financial Administration Act. The report blames these breaches on little or no consultation with the Attorney General’s Department. It says in the rare circumstances in which the A-G’s department was consulted, the legal advice was not enough. Meanwhile the report has praised the Eastern Regional Coordinator of GYEEDA, Joshua Attah Mensah for his dedication to duty. The Committee said Joshua Atta Mensah made strenuous efforts “to establish systems to protect the public purse which is highly commendable.” The report says one such effort led to the retrieval of “GHS54,000.00 of unclaimed allowances from one bank.” Joshua Atta Mensah also made “several attempts to ensure that exited beneficiaries were cleaned from the payroll.” The committee observed that this efforts were hampered by the Better Ghana Management Service “resulting in for example allowances being paid into the accounts of exited beneficiaries in November and December 2012 even though a list of 262 beneficiaries was provided for deletion in October 2012.”
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 15:14:23 +0000
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