4 Jospong officials quizzed by Police over questionable contracts

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The police administration says it is ready to prosecute persons against whom adverse findings will be made in the ongoing investigations into the Jospong scandal.

Accra Police PRO Shiela Buckman says four officials of the Jospong Group of companies have so far been interrogated in a scandal that has seen the media bleed with controversy.

The staff of Multimedia including Manasseh Azure-Awuni, whose investigations triggered the Jospong scandal will also be interrogated on Monday, Buckman revealed.

She will not say exactly when other officials will be invited for questioning on the matter.

It has been two weeks of revelations by Joy News into how the Jospong Group of companies together with ex government officials some of whom were at the Local Government ministry robbed the various assemblies.

The revelations were fruits of a nine month investigation which saw Manasseh Azure Awuni travel to the various assemblies across the country investigating how questionable contracts signed with the Jospong Group of companies left the Assemblies poorer and dirtier whilst the companies became richer.

In the first of two revelations five companies all subsidiaries of Jospong won a contract to supply the Assemblies one million waste bins and 900,000 bins at a contract cost of more some $74 million.

Checks by Joy News indicate that the price of the waste bins may have been inflated from ¢150.00 which was the market price for each bin to ¢235.00 the cost of which will amount to some ¢130 million.

Further checks indicate that the Assemblies did not even need to sign the contract at all because there were already thousands of waste bins at the various assemblies waiting to be transported to various homes, offices across the country.

The contract was sole sourced under questionable circumstances. Apart from that one, the Collins Dauda led Local Government ministry in 2015 signed a ¢98 million fumigation contract allowing the Jospong Group of companies access to spray markets, institutions across the country for a period of four months.

The contract objective was to fight cholera, which in 2014 killed over 100 Ghanaians across the country.

Interestingly, at the time the ¢98 million contract was signed with 11 subsidiaries of the Jospong Group of companies, Zoomlion another company belonging to the Jospong Group had fumigation contract already existing, a contract which millions of cedis being deducted from the Assemblies accounts every month.

Checks by Joy News indicate the Sole Sourcing contract was again awarded under questionable circumstances but the most worrying of it is the companies in most cases failed to do the jobs for which they were paid.

A good number of Assembly men and women claimed they had no idea of the fumigation contract and had never sighted Jospong officials undertaking any fumigation even though monies are deducted at source by the Central government and given to Jospong.

The company has denied any wrongdoing.

However on Wednesday, the Police CID announced it had begun investigations into the matter.

Shiela Buckman urged anyone with information on the contract to make it available for speedy investigation.