The Minority in Parliament has accused the government of inflating the cost of the 307 ambulances procured in 2019. The ambulances were not supposed to exceed $25 million at a unit cost of $80,000. The Auditor General’s 2022 performance audit revealed the inflated procurement.
“$80,000 multiplied by 307, we should not have paid more than $25 million for this ambulance. And yet Ghana was made to pay a colossal, whopping $54.3 million as discovered on page two of the Auditor General’s report.”
The circumstances surrounding the payment of 115 million Ghana Cedis to Service Ghana Auto Group Limited for the maintenance of the ambulances are questionable. The company is also linked to the President’s daughters through a long-standing business partnership. The payment was made without a competitive bidding process, and the company was not the lowest bidder.
“This is a fact. And now in the corruption literature, politically exposed persons come under greater scrutiny. That is why when we were formulating the Office of Special Prosecutor Act, we included politically exposed persons.
“The other thing that makes Stephen Okoro so politically exposed is that we have discovered that he is a longstanding business partner of the Akufo-Addo daughters.”
