Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says the bold decision by the Akufo-Addo government to subject its infrastructure achievements to public scrutiny is a proof of the Akufo-Addo administration’s commitment to transparent and accountable governance.
During the town hall meeting on Tuesday August 19, 2020, the Vice President launched an official website which captures the promises the government made while campaigning for votes in 2016 in addition the state of infrastructural projects initiated across the country.
In an exclusive interview on Peace FM’s Morning Show Kokrokooo, Dr Bawumia said the government’s bold action is an unprecedented display of transparency and accountability of government records in the country and on the African continent.
“We have put together what we have done across all districts to allow people to check for themselves. This is the first time this has happened in Ghana and Ghana is the first country in Africa to do this. No country has done this,” Dr. Bawumia said.
Meanwhile, the opposition, National Democratic Congress (NDC), has debunked these assertions by the government and has listed some 26 projects out of the over 17, 00 which according to them are non-existent.
Addressing the issue, Dr Bawumia clarified that there were truly some omissions and swapping of projects between districts which were not intended. He further advised the party to rather emulate the laudable initiative of the government by also submitting their achievement for public scrutiny and stop finding faults which are non-existent.
“The benefit of the transparency we have introduced has allowed the NDC to interrogate what we have put out. The country has to be proud of what the NPP has done with this innovative website and I challenge the NDC to put out what they have done in detail for us to also interrogate what they claim they have done. I tell you they cannot do it.”
Dr Bawumia also explained that the delivering tacking website will be subject to periodic update by the government on the progress of infrastructural projects initiated across the country adding that officials have corrected projects that were placed in the wrong districts.
“When I made the lectures, I clearly stated that this will be a live website and we will keep updating it as projects develop. It is a live website which inputs projects we have done submitted by MMDCES,” Dr. Bawumia explained.
“Many projects that were not captured by the delivery tracker have now been captured. We have had a lot of our MMDCEs submitting projects which we didn’t even capture, and those we inadvertently placed under different districts have also been corrected.”
The Vice President also stressed that delivery tracking system is not only for accountability purposes but to aid government in making decisions on infrastructure going forward.
“The tracker will help us further in preparing our new budget because we will be able to monitor sector by sector, and avoid duplicating projects when similar projects are completed or ongoing.”
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I’m Deborah Aba Narkoah. I’m an avid reader, writer and public speaker.
