Don’t Award Free SHS Contracts To Party Cronies Alone - MCJ Urges Government

The Media Center for Social Justice (MCJ Ghana) has been following plans by government to put into action its two key electioneering campaign promises. They are the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) Program which takes off today, September 12, 2017, and the One District One Factory Initiative (IDIF) which took off last month.

While congratulating government for making good what initially started as campaign promises, MCJ Ghana wishes to make it known that as part of our local governance anticorruption strategy, we will be monitoring, closely, these two projects, to ensure value for money, and to ensure that due processes are followed in the award of the related contracts.

We fear that the government might be tempted to give contracts under the two projects to party faithfuls alone, most likely as rewards for their support during the 2016 elections. It will be unfortunate if this becomes the case.

We have deployed a number of monitoring Journalists in most of the districts, to track the processes leading to transparency, fair play, and equal participation.

We believe that once we are done with campaigning, the resources to implement the promised projects belong to all Ghanaians, regardless of their political affiliations. Therefore we expect government to give each Ghanaian a fair chance to participate in the opportunities that shall be generated by the implementation of policies resulting out of the elected government.

We are particularly asking the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, to stand firm in his known anti-corruption clothes, and never allow himself to be carried away by the populist aspects of the projects; therein lies corruption, abuse of office, and the violation of the country’s procurement laws.

We cannot afford to be spectators, when we are pouring over GHC4.4billion into these two projects.