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The New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) Members of Parliament want the Engineers and Planners company Limited to pay for using the state’s equipment to dredge the Odaw drain.
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To them, the equipment were procured to be distributed to the various Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to help improve sanitation in the country and not for private use.
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They lamented that “it came as a huge surprise to us that some of the very equipment and machinery found their way into private hands (to wit Engineers and Planners on the instruction of Nii Lante Vanderpuije, a Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development).
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” Addressing a news conference in Accra today [Thursday], the Minority Spokesperson on Local Government, Kwesi Ameyaw Kyeremeh argued that “this amounts to a diversion of state property to an individual because of his links to the top echelons of government.”
“We think that Engineers and Planners should be made to pay for the full cost of the machinery and equipment improperly released to it and in its possession,” he insisted.
The Ministry of Local Government released some state equipment to the Engineers and Planners company to dredge the Odaw drain and have been returned by the company. They included 20 Man Tipper trucks, 4 Komatsu dozers, 3 Komatsu excavators, 3 Komatsu wheel dozers and 2 HBM NOBAS motor graders.
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The decision by government to release the equipment to the company, generated some public outcry because the company belongs to the younger brother of President Mahama, Ibrahim Mahama. The Minority had earlier accused Ibrahim Mahama of using the equipment for his personal gain.