The call by President Akufo-Addo on the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry and other stakeholders to collaborate with the government to come up with cheaper methods and materials to build stronger houses at affordable prices is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The Graphic reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called on the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry and other stakeholders to collaborate with the government to come up with cheaper methods and materials to build stronger houses at affordable prices.
He said one of the surest ways to deal with the 1.8 million deficit in housing was the ability to build houses cheaply because “we cannot continue to ignore the expensive methods of construction that have made housing here a virtual monopoly of the rich”.
President Akufo-Addo made the call when the leadership of the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry paid a courtesy call on him at the Jubilee House in Accra last Wednesday.
The chamber is made up of 14 institutions and associations under the construction industry.
The President said it should not be the case that in the richest countries in the world, such as the United States of America (USA), they had the cheapest housing that one could get, while in Ghana, a three-bedroom house at East Legon in Accra and other places cost between $350,000 and $500,000 (GH¢2.4 million and GH¢3.44 million).
He noted that about $100,000 (GH¢688,500) of that amount could secure a well-built and durable home in the USA, all because the materials that went into the construction were indigenously sourced and built through affordable methods.
“You get mansions for that in many parts of America. Yes, a $100,000; $200,000 maximum. We need to find the solution to how we can build strong houses here, but cheaply,” President Akufo-Addo said.
The newspaper says that the Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, is in Bucharest, Romania on a mission to meet Ghanaian students who have been evacuated from Ukraine amid the country’s ongoing conflict with Russia.
In a Facebook post, Mr Ablakwa, who is the Ranking Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, said the visit affords him the opportunity to closely assess the conditions of the students and to better understand how Ghana can be more helpful to them.
“I do this not merely because it is a constitutional imperative of oversight imposed on parliamentarians; there is a higher obligation of our common humanity and nationhood,” he posted.
This morning I arrived in Bucharest, Romania which shares a southern border with Ukraine to visit our Ghanaian students who escaped from the conflict in Ukraine.
The visit affords me the opportunity to closely assess their conditions and to better understand from their unique perspective how our nation can be more helpful to them as I engage them directly.
“Romania now hosts the largest number of Ghanaian students — an estimated 200, expected to be evacuated to Ghana.
“I have been greatly inspired by the amazing stories of survival and resilience as narrated by our heroic compatriots.
“I salute Ahmed Tijani Abubakr of our diplomatic mission in Prague for his impressive consular services which have been praised by the students”.
Mr Ablakwa’s visit follows the evacuation on Tuesday of the first batch of 17 Ghanaians from Ukraine.
The Ghanaian Times reports that the Internal Audit Agency (IAA) and the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) are to take legal action against three public institutions for misappropriating COVID-19 funds.
The Director-General of the IAA, Dr Eric OduroOsae, who made the disclosure, said the action followed a nationwide review of internally audited reports onCOVID-19 expenditure by the Agency in 2020, in line with the Public Financial Management (PFM) Act, 2016 (Act 921).
Failing to reveal the names of the institutions, he said section 14 of the IAA Act granted the Director-General independence to undertake such specific investigations and “we undertook this exercise to identify audit of all COVID-19 expenditures and we found that there were lot of disbursement that happened outside the national system.”
“We can assure you that at the moment we are working with EOCO to prosecute three institutions and as far as the Agency is concerned, we will pursue such infractions that are of criminal nature to ensure we are getting value for money,” he said.
Dr Osae who was speaking at a public forum on “Accountability Gaps in COVID-19 Response Measures” in Accra on Tuesday indicated that the IAA in coming days would publish names of institutions that defaulted in filing their annual internal audit plans and quarterly reports for the year 2020.
“We are going to publish their names in the dailies and together with the Finance Ministry, we will apply the necessary sanctions,” he stated.
The Director-General called for the institutionalisation of risk-based audits within the public service to respond to organizational risks more timely and allow for management to put in right internal measures in place to control expenditure.
The newspaper says that the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) has urged the Auditor-General (AG) to conduct a special audit into the $2.6 billion (GH₵9.41 billion) oil money allocated to the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) over the 10 years since the country discovered oil.
According to PIAC, “The ABFA which is the amount of petroleum revenues allotted to support the country’s annual budget had the highest allocation (40 per cent) of the $6.55 billion earnings Ghana made within the period, but its overall impact had been minimal, delayed, or negligible.”
In this regard, the Committee recommended that the audit should focus on sectoral allocations of the ABFA in line with requirements of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA), 2011 (Act 815) and the Public Financial Management Act.
PIAC captured this in a report titled “Assessment of the management and use of Ghana’s Petroleum Revenues (2011-2020)” which examined how the country’s petroleum resource had been utilised over the 10-year-period since oil was discovered in commercial quantities.
According to the report launched on Tuesday, the ABFA had been spent on seven out of the 12 priority areas specified under the PRMA with roads, railways, and other infrastructure receiving GH₵4.56 billion (53.51 per cent)
Physical Infrastructure and service delivery in education had GH₵1.85 billion (21.74 per cent) of which government’s flagship programmes such as the Free Senior High School policy accounts for most of the ABFA education spending.
It said expenditure on amortisation of loans for oil and gas infrastructure got GH₵860.24 million (10.11 per cent); Agriculture modernisation, GH₵682.91 million (8.02 per cent); Capacity building (including oil and gas)GH₵358.00 million (4.21 per cent) and Physical infrastructure and service delivery in health had GH₵118.82 million (1.40 per cent).
Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) got GH₵43.99 million (0.52 per cent); Industrialisation,GH₵31.80 billion (0.37 per cent) and PIAC had GH₵11.83 million (0.14 per cent) of total ABFA allocations.
The remaining unutilised amounts went into the Consolidated Fund under government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy.
GIK/APA