Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, has told the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament that companies under the AGAMS Group which were indicted in the GYEEDA report, have paid all their debts to government.
RLG and Asongtaba Cottage Industry Limited were indicted after being paid for no work done after they were contracted to provide service for some of the modules under then GYEEDA programme, now the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).
[contextly_sidebar id=”dI7adPh5d69dghX3JG1IPto65Xbl5bON”]Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong explained that government will seek to retrieve monies from all other indicted companies.
She gave the example of companies under the AGAMS group which have been made to pay the amounts allocated to them.
“With Asongtaba Cottage Industry Limited, they’ve paid in full with interest. They paid the 41,305,000 plus almost four million cedis interest. So they’ve paid GHc45, 177,752.60. The next one that was also referred to us is RLG Communications Limited. The sum stated has been paid in full together with an overpayment. With RLG communications, what we worked on had to do with interest free loan and overpayment that was made to them. And so that has also been recovered together with interest,” she added.
Background to GYEEDA corruption scandal
Some companies including waste and sanitation management firm, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, IT company RLG, Better Ghana Management Services Limited, among others, were contracted to render services under various modules for the GYEEDA programme; which metamorphosed from the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP).
GYEEDA, which was a public initiative targeted at youth development however failed to achieve its purpose as it was characterized by shady deals and corruption related activities.
Following reports of siphoning of state funds, government in 2012 ordered for an investigation into activities of GYEEDA and subsequently terminated the contracts with the various companies.
Former GYEEDA boss, Abuga Pele and Philip Assibit were later hauled before court for the various roles they played in the programme. The trial is still underway.
Gov’t blacklists RLG
Government in December 2015 blacklisted companies indicted in the corruption scandal that hit GYEEDA, which included big names like Zoomlion and RLG.
The announcement was made by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu.
Although he did not mention the companies involved, Haruna Iddrisu said government has decided to blacklist all the companies in a move to serve as a deterrent and to curb corruption in the country.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana