NPP used COVID-19 funds to enrich themselves – Basintale

The Deputy National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Malik Basintale, has alleged that government appointees used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to siphon public funds for personal use.

He made the allegation on the Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News on Citi FM on Friday, November 10.

Basintale claimed that instead of safeguarding the economic fortunes of the country, the government was busy distributing monies to its parliamentary candidates and dolling out monies to its appointees in the form of allowance.

He cited the example of the isolation centre at Adaklu, which he said was renovated with over GH¢15 million of COVID-19 money but was later abandoned and left to rot.

Basintale also alleged that the Information Ministry dolled out over GH¢150,000 to people as allowance without recourse to the procurement laws of the country.

“We must also remember that they were sharing contracts to people without procurement processes and the Information Ministry dolled out over GH¢150,000 to people as allowance without recourse to the procurement laws of this country and we will have to remind Ghanaians that they are paying nuisance taxes because of someone’s recklessness.”

Basintale added that but for COVID-19, the government would have been at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2020 because it would not have been availed to all the credit facilities that it had during and after COVID-19.

“I can confidently say that the government used COVID-19 to enrich themselves and they made a lot of fortune during COVID-19 and in fact, but for COVID-19, we would have been at the IMF in 2020 because we wouldn’t have been availed to all these credit facilities that we had during and after COVID-19.”

—citinewsroom