The Sole Commissioner of the Judgement Debt Commission, Mr Justice Yaw Apau, has observed that the failure of the various ministries to consult the Attorney- General\u2019s (A-G\u2019s) Department before signing contracts has cost the country millions of cedis.<\/p>\n
He said it was wrong for ministries to sign contracts involving huge sums of money without recourse to the A-G, since such contracts had bad clauses which were often exploited to compel the state to pay compensation to contractors.<\/p>\n
He, therefore, stressed the need for the ministries to always seek the input of the A-G before signing any contracts.<\/p>\n
Mr Justice Apau made the call yesterday when the Director of Administration of the Ministry of Health, Mr Hamidu Adakurugu, told the commission that the ministry did not normally consult the A-G before signing contracts.<\/p>\n
Mr Adakurugu said sometimes contracts were prepared by the contractors and taken to the ministers for them to sign.<\/p>\n
“How can a ministry sign a contract when the A-G is not aware? When there is a problem, then the state has to pay,” the sole commissioner said.<\/p>\n
Judgement debt<\/b><\/p>\n
Citing one of the difficult contracts, Mr Adakurugu said the ministry signed a contract with five companies in 2008 to provide maintenance services for some hospitals.<\/p>\n
Under the contract, he said, the companies were to be paid GH\u00a21.4 million a year for five years.<\/p>\n
He said the government paid the companies GH\u00a21.4 million in 2008, although the contract had been signed in September 2008.<\/p>\n
He said following some media publications against the terms of the contract and a subsequent investigation by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the ministry asked for the suspension of the contract in 2009.<\/p>\n
Mr Adakurugu said the five companies took the case to court.<\/p>\n
He said the ministry had reached an out-of-court settlement with the companies which enjoined the state to pay them GH\u00a21.4 million for 2008 work with interest.<\/p>\n
In another case, he said, the ministry contracted Mrs Taylor and Taylor Company to supply laboratory equipment to hospitals in 2011.<\/p>\n
The company was also required to provide technical support for the maintenance of the equipment.<\/p>\n
He said the ministry defaulted in effecting payment after the supplies and the company took the case to court and secured judgement against the ministry.<\/p>\n
He said the ministry then requested that it would pay the compensation by instalment every two months.<\/p>\n
Mr Adakurugu said the companies disagreed with that arrangement and went back to court in 2012.<\/p>\n
The company secured a garnishee order and attached the ministry’s account at the Bank of Ghana (BoG).<\/p>\n
He said the ministry was forced to pay the companies GH\u00a222 million from donor funds in the BoG in 2009.<\/p>\n
He said the funds were tied to some programmes and indicated that the donors would not be happy to hear that.<\/p>\n
EOCO boss<\/b><\/p>\n
The Chief Executive Officer of EOCO, Mr Biadela Mortey Akpadzi, also appeared before the commission in respect of the payment of GH\u00a2314,000 land compensation to the Abutia and Adaklo families.<\/p>\n
He told the commission that EOCO had asked the BoG not to make that payment in a letter in 2010 following revelations that some of the people were conniving with government officials to dupe the state.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Akpadzi said the central bank wrote back to EOCO that it had already released the GH\u00a2314,000 to the two families.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: Graphic Online<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Sole Commissioner of the Judgement Debt Commission, Mr Justice Yaw Apau, has observed that the failure of the various ministries to consult the Attorney- General\u2019s (A-G\u2019s) Department before signing contracts has cost the country millions of cedis. He said it was wrong for ministries to sign contracts involving huge sums of money without recourse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38],"class_list":["post-28185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}