On Oil Revenue Funded Projects: CSOs Demand Forensic Audit

Civil Society, is demanding a forensic audit of all oil revenue funded projects in the country for the last six years.

The CSOs in natural resource management say the move has become necessary due to worrying revelations from its tour to some oil project sites in the country.

They say funds allocated for developmental projects in all the communities they have visited have been diverted by certain individuals.

Speaking to Starr News, the Acting Executive Director of the African Center for Energy Policy, Benjamin Boakye said the situation is affecting the country's ability to meet transparency obligations as signatories to international agreements.

“The recent tracking that we have been doing reveals that we may not be getting value for the expenditure of the revenues as we should. We go to projects either the projects are missing or the projects are delayed and in most cases mean that the money has gone waste,” he said.

He added: “If you put oil money into a road project, you start and you don't complete it and the road goes bad, it means we have lost the money all together. And some projects look like we are just double counting the project and going forward the appropriate thing will be for us to know the specific projects that are receiving the money.”

Earlier this year, the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) said its inspection revealed that oil funded projects in the three Northern Regions in 2016 are non-existent.

Chairman of PIAC, Dr Steve Manteaw whilst addressing a news conference on the findings in April said PIAC was compiling what he described as list of 'Ghost projects' and will soon call upon the Auditor General for further investigation.

According a 2013 report on the management of Petroleum revenues by PIAC, an amount of GH¢372.07 million out of the GH¢543.78million of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) representing 68.42percent was spent on roads and other infrastructure.

Also, according to the report, the remaining GH¢287.20million representing 35 percent of the ABFA allocation was spent on several infrastructural sectors, including energy, education, water, housing, security and health.

Speaking at the news conference, Dr. Manteaw said: “Six projects were inspected in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern regions [and] the findings and observations were overwhelming with fifty percent of the projects being nonexistent.”

In the Committee's interaction with indigenes of the regions during “our district engagement in about sixty districts later in 2016, concerns were raised as to whether PIAC verifies projects which have been reported by the Ministry of Finance to have been undertaken with Petroleum revues.”

He said “over fifty percent of school projects inspected showed signs of serious deterioration in less than three years after completion” including a six-unit classroom block Apedwa SDA primary school in the East Akim District of the Eastern region which has begun to sink due to poor siting and shoddy work.