Questions have been rightly posed about the government or its agencies’ ability to disburse the announced GH¢350 million for flood-impacted persons and the upgrading of infrastructure in the affected areas bereft of scandals.
The Interior Minister, a day after the force majeure, was able to put out a figure as representing the number of persons impacted by the floods. Many wondered how the headcount was so quickly and ‘accurately’ undertaken when many in areas affected did not see any state official engaging them for the purpose of a census.
Doubts are being expressed about the earmarked amount being utilised for the announced purposes – upgrading of infrastructure and for the use of impacted persons.
The Kantamanto Market money earmarked as loans for the impacted traders ended up enriching Sedina Tamakloe. It is this precedent and others which have prompted questions about how the funds would be disbursed without a repeat of previous scandals.
We have already noticed the distribution of items which fall below expectation.
Procurement anomalies are loading as the government prepares to release the funds.
Those who have been named as managers of the relief funds must know that they will one day account to the people of Ghana and to God Almighty, the Ultimate.
Ghana cannot continue to be abused the way we are witnessing, and with impunity as if there is no tomorrow.
GH¢200 million, we are told, would be distributed to flood-impacted persons, criteria to be used yet to be clearly laid out. This is where the propriety challenges would definitely crop up.
We can bet that while only a few flood-impacted persons will be served, majority will simply give everything to God.
Another question worth posing at this stage when the nation is expected to undertake a national cleanup exercise is about the Ghana Meteorological Authority warning about disastrous deluges, the kind of which have not been witnessed in the past thirty years, and the preparation government undertook in response.
Which state agency failed to act upon the weather warning until the nation’s capital suffered what it did?
It is amazing that this question has not been posed with the seriousness that it deserves. In other jurisdictions, the weather warning issued before the heavens opened up, lagoons and water bodies through which inland floodwaters end on their way to the Atlantic Ocean would have been dredged – that did not happen.
Whatever this cosmic two-day national cleanup exercise is expected to achieve is left to be seen.
What a government!