Investigate “Untidy” NLA Contract—Kweku Baako

Veteran Journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako has advocated a full-scale investigation into circumstance under which 11 contracts were awarded to RAMS Kitchen, a company owned by the sister in law of the National Lottery Authority (NLA) Boss, Kofi Osei Ameyaw.

According to Kweku Baako, the facts surrounding the procurement process are untidy adding that, “I don’t like the optics I see…I haven’t said I have evidence to prove that something went wrong.”

Speaking on Joy FM’s News file, last Saturday, he said “…I would support any call for further scrutiny. If an allegation is made—however baseless and frivolous (as many are being made), subject it to scrutiny.”

Fact or mischief, the veteran Journalist noted that if proper probing is not done into the matter, “all these things together could come and bite you one day.”

The said contract had over the weekend stirred up debates with experts raising questions of a “conflict of interest”.

But Bolgatanga Central MP, Isaac Adongo says, the issue for discussion should not be about who won the contract but that the entire  procurement process was fraudulent.

“The issue is the fraud process and the intent behind the process. even if you did the process and it ended up with anybody at all not even your sister in-law, it would be worse, but it is even more rotten when it turns out to be your sister in-law,” he said.

Section 21 (5) of the Public Procurement Act of 2003, states that, “A procurement entity shall not divide a procurement order into parts or lower the value of a procurement order to avoid the application of the procedures for public procurement of this act.”

According to Adongo, what the parties involved in the deal had done was “to circumvent the law in order to engage in an activity that is a violation of the public procurement act.”

A sum presented by Rama Hassan, owner of Rams Kitchen and sister in-law to the embattled NLA CEO suggests that the entire deal had been broken into 11 separate contracts to stay within the threshold that forbids the signing of a contract beyond GHȻ 100,000.

The highest sum recorded on the contract according to Joy FM’s Samson Lardy Anyenini, was pegged at GHȻ99,470.

By: Grace Ablewor Sogbey/ [email protected]