On Day 19 of sittings of the Justice Dzamefe Commission on Thursday, chief executive officer of Amber Foods Limited, Gertrude Quarshigah, one of the caterers contracted to cook for the Black Stars fans in Brazil appeared before the commission to answer questions.
She told the commission that she feels the amount quoted by the World Cup Committee to be cost of foodstuffs she bought in Brazil, were inflated.
She said, “It’s too high because that [currency] had to be transferred to the local currency there and there is nowhere in the world you can go and purchase [foodstuff] in that quantity in dollars.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”cNPY0R9OWfJsjB61fKdJtb9QMtneb2NM”]“The figures are not realistic, not at all,” she added.
She told the commission that the $45 which they had presented to the operational team which included the world cup project coordinator Fred Darko as cost per head was turned down with the excuse that 10 dollars of that money would be allocated to supporters as pocket money.
She also confirmed that the earlier agreement to be paid 70 percent of the money required to purchase ingredients to cook was also not adhered to.
“We the three caterers met to discuss what is going to happen since we don’t have money, we don’t have ingredients to cook.”
We called on the camp coordinator Mr. Agbeshie to give as instructions on what to do since we didn’t have money and ingredients to cook.
We complained to him that what is going on because the agreement was that we were going to be paid money 70 percent to transfer via our Visa cards to Brazil but nothing happened and he said well he will see what he can do because the money they brought had a problem, they cannot access the money,” she told the commission.
She further revealed that the initial agreement reached with the operational committee to provide two meals per day for fans changed to three meals after they arrived in Brazil.
“When we went to Brazil it rained persistently and the weather was very very cold so early in the morning they needed something hot to drink, breakfast was a problem so they had to add breakfast to our food cooking.
That is why we started preparing tea, rice water,tom brown,sandwiches and all that,” she said.
She added that a coupon system that had been designed to guide the feeding programme of the fans was also completely abandoned upon arrival.
She indicated that her attorney was compiling a report of everything that had transpired after which they would consider the next appropriate line of action to recover money that she believed she was entitled to.
She admitted that she received a sum of 19,200 USD in total for the services she rendered.
The commission will resume its sittings on Monday
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Benjamin Nketsia/citifmonline.com/Ghana