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TrenderHQ Blog of Monday, 2 January 2023
Source: Philip NeeWhang
Government spends nearly Gh¢340 million on building the National Cathedral!
By the end of December 2022, the Akufo-Addo-led administration will have blown through approximately GHC340 million on the contentious national cathedral's construction.
This comprises GHC225 million paid directly to the Secretariat and GHC113 million paid directly to Sir David Adjaye, the Consultant.
In a status report on the National Cathedral presented at the Bible Reading Marathon Thanksgiving Service at the project site on Tuesday, January 2, 2023, Dr. Paul Poku Mensah, Executive Director of the National Cathedral Secretariat, made this known.
“For purposes of clarity, I want to report a verbatim memo I sent on this issue dated 19th January 2022 and addressed to the Clerk of Parliament. The indication was that the government has given us GHC339 million and we could account for GHC225 million leaving GHC114 million missing. Here, I quote what I wrote to the Clerk. As we indicated to the Committee on Thursday, December 15, 2022, the total amount paid by the government of Ghana to the National Cathedral project is GHC339 million. This total is made up of the following: the amount paid directly to the National Cathedral Secretariat is GHC225 million. The amount paid directly to the Consultant, Adjaye Associates & Design Team is GHC113.040.54.67 million The two payments total GHC339.003.064.86.”
“So, there are no missing funds that could not be accounted for. Secondly, the detailed account for these funds was provided to Parliament on December 15, 2022, by the Secretariat. In the case of the accounting from the Secretariat, this involves among others, total payments made to the contractor, and total payments made to the Bible Museum and Biblical Gardens Design Team.”
Dr. Paul Opoku Mensah expressed his displeasure over what he called some Members of Parliament's misrepresenting of the project's facts.
“While projects of this nature will always have discontent, we are nonetheless concerned about the misrepresentations particularly when it comes from Members of Parliament. For instance, the continued misrepresentation of the contract to the consultants is worrying as none of the amount bandied around comes anywhere near the contract amount. Rather than 34% that they said we’d paid the architect, actually, the contract figure is 12.5% when the Ministry of Works and Housing allows for 15.5%. And the 12.5% will not change irrespective of what happens to the total cost. More critically, the contract is not for an architect, but for a set of consultants’ services involving 15 international and Ghanaian firms of which Sir David Adjaye Associates is the lead consultant.”
