Richard Boadu
The Administrator of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), Richard Boadu, has disclosed that some 45 infrastructural projects of the fund cannot be traced.
According to him, upon assuming office in 2017, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government conducted an audit on infrastructural projects said to be funded by GETFund as of 2016. He added that 45 of them were on paper but not on the ground.
Taking his turn at the meet-the-press series at the Information Ministry in Accra on Wednesday, the GETFund boss said no financial commitments were made towards the 45 projects because GETFund projects are not pre-financed.
He said efforts were being made to ensure legal actions are taken against individuals who submit projects that are non-existent, with the intention of getting payment from the state.
He said with the help of a GPS data, a total of 7,195 projects were recorded during the audit in the then 10 regions of Ghana.
The administrator said they saved some GH¢41.20 million from the corrections of errors on payment certificates.
According to him, from 2017 to date, a total of 9,449 payment certificates had been received at the GETFund, adding that 8,823 certificates were vetted and processed for payment and “the remaining 626 are being processed, with 294 having technical issues. Out of the total certificates passed, 1,404 had errors.”
He said “corrections of all errors resulted in a net savings of GH¢41.20 million.”
According to the administrator, “82 certificates have not been attended to because they have no contract documents,” adding “these amount to GH¢ 15.5 million.”
“Certificates with various technical issues pending resolutions amount to GH¢21.52 million,” he added.
He dismissed claims that GETFund had borrowed $1.5 billion with no work to show for it, saying about 27 E-blocks were completed between 2017 and 2019, and 22 E-block projects were yet to start, with 46 projects at various stages of completion.
He stated that nine model school projects were also awarded in 2019.
By Melvin Tarlue