Earlier this week, the World Banks representative in Ghana, Pierre Frank Laporte revealed that his outfit had supported the government of Ghana with over $450m to help in the sensitisation and fight of the Coronavirus Pandemic. The revelation brought about conversations surrounding the use of the money and whether government had been honest or not.
Adding his voice to the many Ghanaians who have asked for and MPs who have asked for a full audit of COVID-19 expenditures, the Member of Parliament for Daffiama-Bussie-Issa (DBI) in the Upper West Region explained that, Ghana has since the roll-out of vaccines received 90% [give or take] of it vaccines freely from donors and therefore a need for the Minister of Health Mr. Agyemang Manu to account to Ghanaians on how those monies were spent and what was meant by vaccine acquisition to the tune of 147 million dollars.
Speaking on Day Break Upper East, he explained that there is obviously some level of uncertainty in the vaccine acquisition by the Sector Minister of Health who announced in the Minister’s Press briefing a few days ago that over in excess of 100 million dollars were used in the acquisition of vaccines.
The Legislator stated that “there is some uncertainty in this vaccine acquisition and the good thing to do is proper auditing, let it be clear so that these questions be answered and nobody will be speaking based on conjecture. Let it be clear and transparent to the people and stop running away from auditing “.
According to Dr. Sandaare, the Minister should have told Ghanaians earlier how the funds expended other than waiting for the Country Director of World Bank to reveal the exact amount to Ghanaians before he then responded.
Adding that, “clearly you know we haven’t even achieved the target we set with all these monies coming in. The covid money that has come through both international and local funding sources is huge that could have done so much in this country but as we stand we can’t see any proper Accountability for the money that we have spent”.
Stressing that “largely it (vaccine acquisition) has been through international donations. However, I would admit that, some amount of vaccines were procured by the government But I mean I’ll say that it’s not up to 10% if you make a total procurement”.
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