The minority in parliament is accusing the Akufo-Addo administration of inflating the cost of cocoa road projects.
According to the NDC MPs, 14 billion cedis worth of contracts awarded for 4,600Km of roads under the cocoa roads project undertaken by COCOBOD courtesy of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture is a rip-off.
The Sector Minister Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto in answering questions from Adaklu MP Governs Kwame Agbodza disclosed the projects are aimed at fixing the poor road networks in cocoa-growing areas.
But speaking to the media the minority spokesperson on Roads and Transport Governs Kwame Agbodza argued the cost of the projects don’t reflect value for money.
“Out of 286 projects, a whopping 177 were awarded on sole sourcing. This is a government you can never trust. They tell you to look up you should be looking down, Never trust them! This government has awarded so many projects under sole sourcing when they have even the Minister of Procurement. So I’m encouraging the Media to be more critical of the NPP. They’ve told so much untruth and we are suggesting two things that those Road projects have been inflated and the Minister didn’t tell the truth about whether he warded the projects in dollars. And thirdly what is the reason for this large number of projects when they promised Ghanaians that they were going to make sole-sourcing an exception and not the norm, but today it takes the norm instead of an exception. Part of the reasons why we are not able to build more roads is because of these…” he said.
According to him, the Mahama administration spent 5.1 billion cedis on 2900km of roads, and thus the conclusion of the cost stated by the minister is inflated.
