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General News of Thursday, 24 December 2015
Source: citifmonline.com
Vitus Azeem, Executive Secretary – GII
Anti-Corruption Group, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) wants government to crack the whip on all those found culpable in the Ghc3. 6 million bus branding scandal.
In his latest move to tackle the issue, the Chief of Staff, Mr. Julius Debrah, has asked the Attorney General and Minister of Justice to recover from Smartty’s Management Limited, a total of GHC 1.9 million.
This comes after the resignation of the Transport Minister Ms Dzifa Attivor over the scandal.
But in an interview with Citi News, Executive Director of the GII, Vitus Azeem, insisted that more heads must roll to ensure that the matter is dealt with effectively.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction for the Minister to accept responsibility and resign. It’s also a step in the right direction for the Chief of Staff to order that some amount of the money that was paid to be returned.”
Vitus Azeem however added that all those involved in the deal must be dealt with beyond the minister’s resignation and an order for the retrieval of the money.
“…You need to go a bit further than just having the minister resign and taking the money back. Who were responsible for this whole thing in the first place? Did they get the authority from the right person to go ahead and do the re-branding.? If they got the right person, did they go through the procurement processes as required by the procurement Act 663.?” he quizzed.
Vitus Azeem explained that “If they broke the procurement rules, who were responsible for breaking the rules; sanctions should be applied. Even though the Minister has accepted the responsibility and gone ahead to resign, she might not be directly involved in this, so there are other people who might have been involved; so you need to impose some sanctions on them which may include demotion, firing, recovery of the monies and even removal of those stickers on the bus by this person at his or her own cost,” he added.
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