Ghanatodayonline.com News, Politics, Health, Education & More
According to Dr. Joyce Aryee, a member of the National Cathedral of Ghana’s Board of Trustees, the project would proceed despite the recent blocking of a GHS80 million fund set aside for the National Cathedral’s construction in the 2023 budget.
The minority side of the committee voted 11:10 in favor of rejecting the budget, which was then rejected by the commerce, industry, and tourist committee of parliament.
The project won’t be halted as a result of the budget’s rejection, according to Dr. Aryee, because the GH80 million is “not the total money that is needed to construct and complete the structure.”
“I know you are going to contribute your money, and I will bring mine, and anybody who we will contact and is willing will bring theirs,” she told Joy FM in Accra. “It does not mean the project cannot go on.”
“In reality, those who are willing are the ones providing the funding for the building,” she continued.
I believe that everyone should remain composed and unperturbed.
“People have said that there has not been transparency, but every year in the budget there has been some seed money not taken from what I understand from the Contingency Fund, but I heard there’s something called Contingency Vote,” Dr. Joyce Aryee said.
On Tuesday, December 20, 2022, a committee member named Yussif Sulemana told journalists: “I can tell you on authority that at the end of the day, we had to vote, and after the vote, the minority carried the day.
We have voted against it because we believe that now is not the appropriate moment to invest so much money in constructing a cathedral.
Apart from that, we were informed at the committee level that they had already spent GHS339 million, and when we requested them to provide us with documentation of how the money was used, it was difficult, according to the Bole-Bamboi MP.
“we were told that they have moved the cathedral from wherever it was to the ministry of tourism. And the question I put to them was that that organisation that is handling this cathedral, the secretariat, is it under the ministry of tourism?
“If it’s not under the ministry of tourism, then it means that you want to use the ministry as a conduit to send the money wherever you want to send it and we, the minority, will not accept it.” He stated.
A few weeks ago, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said that his use of cash from the contingency vote to support the building of the national cathedral did not violate the law.
The minority caucus submitted a motion for censure in response to seven claims against him, and he testified before the ad hoc committee hearing those allegations that the “National Cathedral is 100% owned by the state and is not the president’s cathedral as claimed by the proponents.”
“As has been the custom before my tenure, expenditures in respect of the national cathedral were made from the contingency vote under the other government obligations vault,” Mr. Ofori-Atta said.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
