PIAC team interacting with Headmaster- Francis Adajagsa (in smock)
Chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), Dr. Steve Manteaw, believes that the time has come for local people to be empowered with information about infrastructural contracts that have been awarded in their localities to help monitor progress and quality of work done.
In his view, this is one way of ensuring that contractors do what is right and also get local leaders supporting the implementation of development projects in their localities.
Dr. Steve Manteaw raised this concern in an interview with DAILY GUIDE after inspecting a two-storey building dormitory for the Fumbisi Senior High-Agric School in the Builsa South District in the Upper East Region.
In 2017, government of Ghana invested an amount of GH¢40,505.18 from the country’s share of oil revenue to complete the dormitory which had been abandoned for years. The dormitory was completed and handed over to the school in the same year. Unfortunately, the school authorities did not know how much money was allocated for the completion of the dormitory.
In spite of the fact that the inspection team of the PIAC was happy with the existence of the project, they were unenthused about what they described as ‘poor work” by the contractor.
The project was handed over in 2017, yet it has already started showing signs of deterioration in 2018, with many portions of the roof leaking, concrete floors breaking up and plastering breaking off the stairway concrete.
PIAC to ensure the right thing is done
This is the second time the issue of lack of information about local projects awarded on contract has been raised during an inspection tour of the region by PIAC.
According to Dr. Manteaw, during PIAC’s 2016 inspection tour of the Upper East Region, some headmasters of beneficiary senior high schools and district chief executives had no information on projects and the amounts of money their schools and districts were benefitting from Ghana’s share of oil revenues.
He has promised to raise the concern again in the next PIAC report, and PIAC will follow up to ensure that mandated institutions make contract information available to all relevant local authorities to ensure accountability and monitoring of projects by a third party.
The PIAC inspection team has called on the Project Consultants Architectural and Engineering Services Limited, to get the contractor to get back to site to correct all defects on the dormitory before school reopens in September 2018.
FROM: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Fumbisi