Missing oil projects saga: Media distorted report – Kwakye Ofosu

A former deputy Minister of Communications under the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government, Felix Kwakye-Ofosu has accused the media of “distorting” the report of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) on oil revenue funded projects.

PIAC on Tuesday, April 10 stated projects supposed to be done by oil revenue in the three Northern regions were missing after an inspection in 2016.

At a press conference to publicise the findings of the report, PIAC’s Chairman Dr. Steve Manteaw said:“Six projects were inspected in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions [and] the findings and observations were overwhelming with fifty percent of the projects being nonexistent.”

But in his reaction to the report, Mr Kwakye-Ofosu said despite having grave concerns with the findings contained in the report, the media was to blame for spinning it to cause public disgust to the former administration.

He said: “When in fact it is the case that PIAC collected…projects at random out of an estimated 500 projects that have been earmarked to be undertaken by the oil proceeds. In this particular instance, they went to the Northern, Upper East and Upper West and inspected six projects and found out three projects that had been budgeted for had not been executed.

“Now, when you report that and frame it in such a way to suggest that nearly half or almost half of all monies voted for the execution of oil projects have been accounted for, it creates a problem [and] distorts the true picture.

“I am not sure that when you hear that three out of six projects have been executed you would react to it the same way as when you hear that 50percent of all projects earmarked to be executed by oil proceeds have been executed. So it is important that they take note of how they communicate their findings.”

He added: “I am not sure that they alone should shoulder this blame. I think that in many respects the media too have to shoulder some of this blame. They distort the true and accurate picture that should be presented to the public.”