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The South Dayi member of parliament, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, has drawn attention to what he sees as inconsistencies in the amount of money the government has so far spent building the National Cathedral.
In a social media post, Dafeamekpor released passages from documents from the National Cathedral Secretariat and the Finance Ministry, which indicate a range of numbers for the overall amount of money spent on the contentious project.
The project cost GH339 million, according to the Finance Ministry, whereas the secretariat reported GH225 million.
There was a GH114m discrepancy between the numbers the Finance Ministry and National Secretariat reported to Parliament.
“When Ken Ofori Atta appeared before the Adhoc Committee in Parliament, he gave a document that shows that he had paid Ghc339m to the National Cathedral project. However, when the Cathedral people came before the joint Committee on Trade & Sports, they had received only Ghc225m”, he tweeted. “
The GH80m set aside for the cathedral in the 2023 budget has been blocked by the minority in parliament in the meanwhile.
On Tuesday, December 20, 2022, Yussif Sulemana, a representative for Bole-Bamboi, 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 and have stated that now is not the appropriate moment to spend so much money on constructing a cathedral.
Apart from that, they claimed to have already spent GH339 million at the committee level, and when we pressed them for proof, they found it difficult to comply.
“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 organization that is handling this cathedral, the secretariat, is it under the ministry of tourism?”
“If it’s not under the tourist ministry, then you want to use the ministry as a conduit to transfer the money anywhere you want to send it, and we, the minority, will not tolerate it,” a member of the group said.
President Akuf-Addo claims that Ghana built the Cathedral as an act of thanksgiving to God for sparing the nation from a catastrophic calamity.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
