New Patriotic Party (NPP) has disclosed that
the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration has paid about
GH¢949,661,017 through Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency
(GYEEDA), now Youth Employment Agency to Rlg Communications Ghana Limited for no
work done.The information and communications technology (ICT) company
owned by a Ghanaian entrepreneur, Mr. Roland Agambire, NPP revealed, was “owing”
another GH¢259,000,000 when the December 2012 general elections were
over.
“Thus, as much as GH¢1,208,661,017 was spent on an elaborate,
corrupt scheme, created mainly to assist President John Mahama hold on to power
in 2012, using the false excuse of creating jobs for the young people of Ghana.
Four years on, still, everyone in two young persons are unemployed.”
This
was revealed by the Policy Advisor of the NPP, Mr. Boakye Agyarko, at a news
conference at the party’s headquarters in Accra yesterday.
He pointed out
that it was useful to recollect that the NPP’s National Youth Employment
programme was launched on October 3rd, 2006.
According to him, by the
time NPP left office on January 7, 2009 about 110,000 young people were employed
under the scheme, earning incomes and not a single allegation of scandal was
linked to the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) for two
years.
He pointed out that the first innovative policy initiated by the
NDC when it took office was to change the name from NYEP to GYEEDA, after which
they proceeded to lay off all the 110,000 young Ghanaians under the
NYEP.
“Yet, after spending an equivalent of nearly half a billion
dollars, the NDC has not been able to employ more than 70,000 young Ghanaians
under the scheme in eight years,” he added.
According to Mr. Agyarko, it
was by this time in 2012 that hundreds of millions of Ghana Cedis were released
for unbudgeted expenditure, including payments to Rlg Communications Ghana
Limited, for distribution of laptops embossed with President Mahama’s campaign
pictures.
The NPP policy advisor alleged that the amounts fraudulently
abused under these so-called employment schemes went to companies with very
close links to President Dramani Mahama from the womb of the AGAMS Group such as
rLG, Craftpro and Asongtaba.
Some of the payments made to AGAMS, he
mentioned, for instance, were laundered and rechanneled to fund campaign
spending on billboards, newspaper, TV and radio adverts for the President and
his party, the NDC.
“Indeed, such was the impunity used in abusing public
funds that the benefiting media houses did not even bother to question why
cheques from AGAMS were issued to them for payments of adverts done for the
ruling party.
He said an illegal loan of GH¢50 million was also advanced
to the AGAMS Group by GYEEDA.
Mr. Agyarko also mentioned that the Ghana
National Education Coalition in 2013 complained about the fact that the laptop
contract, sole-sourced to rLG, using a cheap Ubuntu software, was twice as
expensive as other similar computers on the local retail market.
He
indicated that GYEEDA, which replaced the National Youth Employment Programme of
the NPP, was set up ostensibly to offer jobs for young
Ghanaians.
“Instead, it became a conduit for looting state funds and
funding the President’s 2012 campaign,” he averred.
To date, the NPP man
wondered why not a single person has been successfully prosecuted for the
blatant and systematic theft of state funds.
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