With the recent discovery of $590,000 and ȼ2,730,000 at the former Sanitation Minister, Cecilia Abena Dapaah’s residence, the North Tongu MP, has questioned whether money allocated for government projects is really used for its intended purpose.
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, speaking in an interview on The Pulse on Thursday asked what is going on with the value for money in project execution.
According to him, there is a need for the entire government projects to be subjected to thorough scrutiny.
“When the House resumes, some of us are going to be submitting motions to the Speaker for a larger audit into government projects, initiatives.
“How sure are we that when they [Ministers] really come to Parliament for approval, those sums of money really go into the project?” he asked.
According to him, it is time to reform auditing to make it more efficient and stringent in order to avoid loopholes.
His comment follows the Office of the Special Prosecutor revealing that a cash amount of $590,000 was discovered during the search at Madam Dapaah’s Abelemkpe home.
At the same residence, a sum of ȼ2,730,000 in cash was found.
Officials from the Office of the Special Prosecutor subsequently seized these cash sums to aid ongoing investigations.
Sources also say the office found $5 million, ¢48 million was found in Cecilia Dapaah’s Prudential Bank accounts.
Also, it found ¢1 million in investments and ¢700,000 in cash in her Societe General account.
Commenting on this, the legislator described the extra money found in Madam Dapaah’s account as ‘mind blogging.’
According to him, the revelation begins to speak to how endemic the Akufo-Addo / Bawumia government has been in corruption.
“They clearly have been neck deep, it is shocking that all of this money can end up in private homes and private accounts and the system does not detect to know that the government is losing money.
“It tells you that there are fundamental problems because we are not talking about thousands of cedis or dollars but millions,” he said.
