A report that has been published by the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) has revealed that funds from Ghana’s oil revenue is inefficiently used, following which a call has been made for the proper mechanism to be put in place for the utilisation of the funds to benefit the citizenry.
According to GACC, projects supported by oil funds are not meeting the demands of the populace, indicating that Ghana’s use of the funds is either inefficient or not strategic.
The GACC reported that at least 500 projects across 17 thematic areas, received funding of about GHC1,303,419,796.26 from the master list of initiatives, funded with petroleum money (ABFA-sponsored projects).
Madam Beauty Emafa Narteh, GACC’s Executive Secretary, in the report which has been sighted by The Chronicle, said the purpose for the publication is to enable the media to examine the projects.
According to her, the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) provided funding for the project, which ran from September 2022 to September 2023.
The GACC Executive Secretary stated that the Coalition’s Local Accountability Networks (LANets) conducted pre-mid-terminal and post-monitoring operations, which showed that the projects, which began as early as 2011, were at different levels of completion.
She indicated that since the communities were mainly ignorant of these projects, it did not appear to be meeting the requirements of the people.
She said, using a monitoring tool created by the GACC Project Implementation Team, the LANets carried out monitoring exercises on 33 projects funded by petroleum revenue in 18 districts spread over six regions of the country.
Madam Narteh disclosed that Ghana’s use of its oil revenue could be more strategic and efficient, in comparison to other oil-rich counties in the Gulf and Scandinavia.
The Executive Secretary, it was discovered, that locals in the areas where projects, supported by petroleum money were being built, were unaware of the project specifics, including its contractor, cost and length.
She said the government and contractors working on the aforementioned projects had little or no citizen involvement, which could be the reason for the predicament.
Madam Narteh disclosed that the GACC discovered phenomena known as protocol or parachute projects, which are contracts and projects that were granted at the federal level and implemented at the local level.
According to her, the initiatives, which were purportedly awarded in order to obtain political advantage, were frequently unknown to the community’s residents and the numerous District Assemblies.
She reiterated that the District Assemblies lack the authority to supervise project construction and lacked project documentation and for that matter, are powerless to hold the contractors responsible for any accidents.
The GACC Executive Secretary further stressed that implementation was extensively delayed because of various difficulties that emerged in the process.
He added that even though the project implementation began in September 2022, monitoring took place in April 2023, eight clear months after the project began.
The delay, she said, was mainly because of the difficulty in accessing oil-funded project information and in obtaining introductory letters from the relevant state agencies.
She said the letters were to be presented by the LANets to their respective MMDAs ahead of their monitoring activities and despite substantive efforts made by the GACC; the list of ABFA-funded projects could not be formally obtained from the Ministry of Finance.
She said another challenge was the Coalition’s inability to obtain relevant technical inputs from the Contractors’ Association and the Chamber of Construction, as they never responded to GACC’s overtures sent to them.
The GACC official mentioned the lack of cooperation from the Ellembele District Assembly in the Western Region as another obstacle to the project, citing the Public Interest and Accountability Committee’s (PIAC) prior monitoring of the aforementioned projects as justification and the LANet’s ability to contact them for the necessary information.
She is of the view that, the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) should be included in the initial data gathering for such initiatives and advised implementers to monitor the procurement process going forward.
Madam Narteh suggested that in order to guarantee that current data is gathered and utilised to support policy advocacy and monitoring, projects supported by the oil industry need to be routinely monitored.
