Zoomlion – The Conduit for Siphoning the Nation’s Blood

By Fadi Dabbousi

Honest labour is a long uncertain road often appropriately described as serpentine. It is winding with acute corners that are treacherous, least accommodating, and highly uncomfortable, in many instances. However, in the case of Zoomlion, the road was short with two laps to the finishing line. Since the CEO began with this initative, he manoeuvered the corridors of power under different administrations; a political charlatan, well cushioned by his versatile disposition of wooing, enticing, and greasing hands at all levels. It is no longer a hidden secret that in the last few days, government signed an 18 million dollar e-waste contract with a waste company. After all, how many waste companies do we have in this country capable of handling such a gargantuan task? Unless Ibrahim Mahama and his cohorts or the others in the sinister alleys of corruption have become “borla” (refuse) collectors, then we can safely say that it was Zoomlion that had zoomed in on this deal.

Yet Joseph Agyapong had the audacity to attempt visiting the President elect until he was advised by his associates to recoil into the niche that he came from. What kind of cosmetic baloney is that at all?

What did Zoomlion have to do with the bus procurement scandal? Why did those buses cost $200,000 USD (two hundred thousand US Dollars) per unit when the cost at the factory was about $50,000 (fifty thousand US Dollars) each? Why were countless fake websites created to mislead researchers into thinking that one unit was going for approx. $120,000 USD (one hundred and twenty US Dollars)? Granted that those prices were correct, where did the excess of $80,000 (eighty thousand US Dollars) per bus go to?

You see, you can fool some people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time, so here you stand, Mr CEO of Zoomlion, pants down caught in the act of doing the nation in.

The instances of wilful negligence and financial pillage of the State is obscene, offending, and profane! What happened to the housing project awarded Zoomlion, which never took off in spite of the fact that moneys were paid to the company by the direct intervention of the big boy(s) at the top? I shall not add more scandals to this particular article, because the next one that lands will carry contract numbers, dates, content material, and names of signatories.

But there was an inquiry addressed to the Honourable Minister of Youth and Sports, dated 17th August 2015 referenced YEA/IKP/Vol.I.029/15 captioned, “Request for Information on Payments to Zoomlion Ghana Limited”, and signed by the Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA). In the reconciliation statement on page 2, six huge payments totaling GHs237,783,927.80 (two hundred and thirty seven million, seven hundred and eighty three million, nine hundred and twenty seven Ghana Cedis and eighty pesewas) were disbursed to you between 16/07/2014 and 10/04/2015. I ask you Mr Joseph Agyapong, what work did your company do to warrant these suspicious payments? Then a head-bashing amount of GHs448 150 762 (four hundred and forty eight million one hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred and sixty two Ghana Cedis) was indicated as outstanding to be paid, so, again, what work did you do to warrant all that money, especially that the economic situation in Ghana has been the worst that it ever was since independence under the create, loot and share brigade of the NDC that you happily joined? While you live the lifestyle of debauchery with the full complement of police, pickup and personnel, in front of your house, children are left begging on the streets to fend for themselves as they starve. I don’t want to hear stories that you supplied 275 constituencies with T-shirts in the run-up to the elections because that one too was a horrendous lie. According to my checks, no one received any.

You allowed yourself to be used as a conduit for mightier people at the very top to loot the nation’s money. Let it be told that once upon a time, there was a “Zoomlion of national shame” that an incorruptible NPP government expunged from existence, and shelved in the annals of history where it will continue to nauseate historians with its putrid stories. Stand by for more…