The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has provided justification for the reason it chose to spend more than GH7 million on a project that was only anticipated to cost around GH1 million.
In a statement, the Ministry criticized media accounts of the project as unreliable and provided explanations for why the project’s cost increased to GH7 million.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry testified before the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament on Friday, January 20, claiming that the contractor’s tardiness caused the project, which was initially estimated to cost the government GH1,435,728.99, to be completed at a cost of GH7,967,886.57.
International Development Resources was given the job of renovating the Adu Lodge Guest House on March 15, 2007.
The project, however, according to the Ministry’s Acting Chief Director Ambassador Ramses Joseph Cleland reportedly stalled out a year later as a result of the contractor’s poor health.
The project was reevaluated in March 2019 at a cost of GH7,967,886.57 for the same contractor to complete it, according to the Ministry.
However, in an effort to clear the air, the Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that the original award to Messrs International Development Resources (IDR) on 15th March 2007 by the Architectural Engineering Services Limited (AESL) was to demolish the originally existing 3 buildings that constituted the Lodge, at the time, and construct a new building of twelve (12) bedroom at a contract sum of Fourteen Billion, Three Hundred and Fifty-Seven Million, Two Hundred and Eighty-Nine Thousand, Seven Hundred and Seventy old Ghana cedis (14,357,289.77), equivalent to One Million, Four Hundred and Thirty-Five Thousand, Seven Hundred and Twenty-Eight new Ghana Cedis, Ninety-Eight Pesewas (GH01,435.728.98) after the redenomination of the Cedi in July 2007.
However, the contract amount was revised in October 2011 to a total of $4,000,000, $480,000, $550,58 Ghana Cedis, and $70 pesewas.
Read the full statement below:
