Tema Metropolitan Engineer, Anthony Opoku-Mensah has denied an alleged GH¢ 80,000.00 fraud case against him by the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA).
According to him, no official invitation was extended to him by the Public Relations Complaint Committee constituted to look into an alleged GH¢ 80,000.00 fraud case brought against him and Coordinating Director, Emmanuel Abuanor Nortey.
“No invitation was extended due to the dubious and incompetent administrative tactics being adopted by Mr. Emmanuel Abuanor Nortey, the Coordinating Director of the Assembly” he said.
He also explained that on the second occasion, he had duly sought permission from the Presiding Member to go and seek clarification from head of Local Government Service about a letter he had received from the Coordinating Director.
He believes playing his role as an Engineer has rather landed him into trouble.
“The fact is, a private developer is developing a so-called Gas Project right into the sea at Bankuman ( Tema Newtown) instead of the Main Port at Tema without genuine development permit. Therefore, on 29th March 2017, I went to the project site with a team of armed Policemen from Tema Regional Police Command and managed to stop the project and locked-up the site,” he revealed.
The private developer unhappy about the development went and produced a construction permit that had been signed by the Coordinating Director and payment receipts.
“We doubted the authenticity of the permit because the permit application never went through appropriate stages. Also, the alacrity with which the Coordinating Director issued the permit to the developer without due process is fishy and calls for investigations,” he said.
He insisted Coordinating Directors are not supposed to sign for construction permits because they are not Engineers and therefore don’t have the technical know-how to assess designs properly.
“Having realized the gravity of anomaly committed, they started peddling falsehood about bribe allegations of different figures Ghc 50,000, Ghc 80,000, Ghc100,000 and Ghc120,000 against me to throw dust into the eyes of the public so as to get away with it,” he said.
According to the Engineer, it is, however, unclear what influenced the decision of the Coordinating Director to ironically issue a permit to a private developer without the knowledge of the Statutory Planning Committee.
He maintained that he the Engineer cannot be accused of Ghc80,000 fraud case because he did not sign the permit but rather the one who speedily signed the permit because he would not have signed the permit in that manner without any consideration.
The Engineer, who is not happy with the description “Acting”, produced his appointment letter from the Local Government Service Secretariat.
Attached is a copy.
