https://www.myjoyonline.com/gyeeda-with-no-legal-department-approved-lopsided-contracts-amaliba/-------https://www.myjoyonline.com/gyeeda-with-no-legal-department-approved-lopsided-contracts-amaliba/
A member of the National Democratic Congress legal team has attributed the rot in the Ghana Youth Employment & Entrepreneurship Development Agency (GYEEDA) to the absence of a legal department to scrutinise contracts entered into with service providers. Abraham Amaliba said the Agency, without any scrutiny by lawyers, accepted the lopsided contracts that were brought by the service providers. He made the comments on Joy FM and Multi-TV news analysis programme, Newsfile, Saturday. The comments are in reaction to details of the unpublished but leaked report of investigations into the operations at GYEEDA. The investigation uncovered stinking contracts, widespread corruption and recommended prosecution of some six officials of the Agency. Per the report, intercepted by Joy News, Zoomlion was said to have made super normal profits after raking in 400.00 cedis management fee every month per each beneficiary. The beneficiaries were each paid 100.00 cedis under the contract. Omar Ibrahim, Joseph Osbourne Gyaning, King George Fokuo, Abdulai Badara were all mentioned in the report as having been corrupt or engaged in conflict of interest situations. Betty Mensah, another employee of the Agency was found to have collected 52,000 cedis bribe from a film institute in order to allow the institute's graduates to benefit from one of the GYEEDA modules. The committee members have recommended prosecution for all the six and the abrogation of some of the contracts. Days after the committee concluded its investigations, with the report handed to the president, the content of the report is yet to be made public, a situation which has left critics accusing government of plotting to cover up. But Joy News which began the crusade on the GYEEDA rot has intercepted the report and is releasing content in piecemeal. Commenting on the report, Abraham Amaliba said government has nothing to hide. He said if government wanted to cover-up, it would not have encouraged a full-scale investigations into the matter because two initial reports from the same Agency were nothing good to write about. Amaliba insisted that at the appropriate time the government will publish the report and take the necessary action. He was however not the least surprised with the content of the report. He said for an Agency that had no legal department, issues like these were bound to happen. According to him, the Agency just accepted the contracts drafted by the service providers without a second legal eye which will secure the interest of the agency and the state. He said, as expected, these contracts were crafted in ways that served the parochial interest of the service providers and at the detriment of the state. Abraham Amaliba also attributed the rot at GYEEDA to the failure by the NDC government to streamline the project it inherited from the NPP. According to him, the government after accepting the project "hook line and sinker," added several other modules to it without any re-engineering and that too is to blame for the rot. Executive Director of the Danquah Institute, Gabby Asare Otchere Darko said apart from prosecuting those found to have engaged in bribery and corruption, those who approved the stinking contracts must also be held to account. He did not understand how such lopsided contracts with "significant windfall profits at the expense of the tax payer" were negotiated and approved. "The focus must now be on those who negotiated these contracts," he observed, adding, if monies were wasted like this, why should anybody be surprised that Ghana by December 2012 had a budget deficit of 8.7 billion cedis.

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