[ 2012-09-24 ]

Vomit Waterville €35m – NPP
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has stoked the
judgement debt fire, demanding especially the
immediate retrieval by President John Mahama of
the €35 million illegal payments to Waterville
Construction Company for, as the party noted, “no
work done” and under an opaque arbitration
process.

In a statement signed by the party’s General
Secretary, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie aka Sir John, the
NPP observed that although the payment was made
over two years ago by a President Mills-led NDC
government, no attempt had been made towards
retrieving it.

The silence over the retrieval of the said amount,
the party noted, was in spite of President John
Mahama’s claim of being in charge of everything
even when the late president was alive and
seemingly in charge of government. The president’s
promised commitment to addressing the aberrations
in the nation’s payment systems, when he addressed
the nation, the NPP added, did not seem to be
holding, against the backdrop of the realities on
the ground.

Ghanaians, the party observed, were hopeful when
the president, in his policy statement, said, “I
am absolutely committed to addressing the
aberrations in our national systems of payments”
and that he was going to ensure that all monies
paid to persons and institutions that did not
deserve them are retrieved through all legal
means.

The NPP, the statement demanded, “is asking the
President to retrieve the taxpayer’s money paid to
Waterville immediately”; pointing out that it was
worrisome that the case had not come under
investigation two years after the payment. The
statement added, “Government officials are well
aware that this payment was a dubious one and yet,
no attempt has been made to retrieve the monies
paid.”

Shedding light on the case under review, the party
recalled that a March 16, 2010 letter to
government by Business Industry Consultants (BIC)
notified the Mills/Mahama administration that
Waterville had been fully paid the certified
amount- some €21 million- by the Kufuor
administration through Consar and Michelleti,
evidence of which, the party added, could be
ascertained from the Ministry of Finance and the
Bank of Ghana.

Waterville, the party explained, further made
claims for the payment of €35 million upon the
assumption of office of the NDC administration in
2009, through a questionable arbitration process.

“If Ghanaians are to take President Mahama serious
on his stance against corruption”, the NPP said,
“he must, without any hesitation, retrieve this
amount from Waterville, before his caretaker
Presidency ends on January 7 2013.”

Until recently, what has become part of the
Ghanaian political language, judgment debt, was
limited perhaps to those in the legal profession
and politicians.

Today, it has become common to those who seek to
rubbish the sincerity of the ruling government’s
commitment to protecting the public purse.

It was the payment to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the
financial engineer said to be in charge of
financially supporting the ruling party, which
opened the can of worms of questionable payment of
judgment debts and now an open sore on the
integrity of government and a source of a running
polemics among politicians from both sides of the
divide.

It is one political tool the NPP is not ready to
let go, especially as the campaign season heats
up.

Source - Daily Guide

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