Zoomlion Fingered In Another Multi-Million Cedi Scam?

Highly placed sources at the Common Fund Secretariat are waving bright red flags to pay waste management giant Zoomlion tens of millions of Ghana cedis in the name of Ghana�s impoverished district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies. At present, most if not all of the assemblies are in trouble and heavily strapped for cash, but this has apparently not stopped preparations to shovel tens of millions of cedis into the lap of the mandarins at Zoomlion. At the centre of the scam is a contract that Zoomlion is operating with all the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies. It goes by the name the Sanitation Improvement Program. This newspaper is reliably informed that the Sanitation Improvement Program contract was signed between Zoomlion and all the district assemblies from July of 2007 for a period of five years. That contract came to an end in June 2012. Under it, all the district assemblies were paying, through the Common Fund Administrator, an amount of GHC 37,000.00 every quarter. Documents we have seen suggest that this contract expired in June 2012, and were not renewed at the time. Under the terms of the contracts the parties were allowed, renewed and the parties have seven days to renew the contract upon expiration. Strangely, it is only now that Zoomlion and the powers that be are pressing the district assemblies to sign the contracts again. Copies of the new contracts that this newspaper have sighted reveal that strangely, the new contracts that are being signed now are effective from July 2012, and the new fee is GHC 46,250.00 for a quarter, which is a 25% increment on the GHC 37,000. This paper can state that the authorities at the Common Fund Administrator�s Office are working breathlessly feverishly to ensure that the monies under these contracts are paid. �At present they are preparing to pay him and the contract is being signed for five years,� the source said. Ghana has 216 district assemblies, and at a unit fee of GHC 46,250, the Common Administrator is looking to pay tens of millions of Ghana cedis to Zoomlion, for work that they insist was hardly on the ground.