Earlier, the MP alleged that Ursula Owusu awarded a US$ 48 million contract without approval.
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Ablakwa petitions World Bank over Ursula Owusu's unapproved US$48 million contract
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongu has petitioned the World Bank against the Communications Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful for awarding a US$48 million contract without authorisation from the Public Procurement Authority (PPA).
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa
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This was after he had used the Right to Information and written to them inquiring about the situation.
The request dated 8th June was titled "REQUEST FOR INFORMATION," and read in part: "Respectfully, can you confirm if the Public Procurement Authority has granted procurement approval as required per the Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) as amended with (Act 914) to Ascend Digital Solutions under a US$48 million Rural Telephony Project contract purportedly for Engineering, Design, Build, Rollout and Managed Services which is being executed by the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization since the year 2020."
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful
Pulse Ghana
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The PPA in its response dated 30th June 2023 and signed by Deputy Chief Executive Kwame Prempeh per the letter shared by the North Tongu MP read: "We wish to inform you that our records do not reflect any information of the above-mentioned project."
But Ursula Owusu-Ekuful denied and insisted that the claims leveled against her are false and asked Ablakwa to "please produce the contract you claim I signed without PPA approval."
According to Ursula in a Twitter post on July 7, 2023, the only RTP contract signed is a commercial contract agreement between the government of Ghana, Huawei Technologies, and China National Technical Import and Export Corporation.
An amount of €155,000,000 was requested by the Communications Minister to be used to execute the implementation of the Ghana Rural Telephony and Digital Inclusion Project.
On July 12, 2023, the NDC MP published a formal petition he had submitted to the World Bank a day prior seeking a probe into the "irregularities, misrepresentation, insider dealing & conflict of interest," around the US$ 48 million Ascend Scandal.
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In a Twitter post, he said: Yesterday I petitioned @WorldBank to launch investigations into the litany of irregularities, misrepresentation, insider dealing & conflict of interest relating to the US$48million Ascend Scandal & how that was used to fraudulently secure a US$49.5m WB funded eTransform project.
The eight-page petition was addressed to Ms. Maria C. Mallo, a senior investigator of the World Bank in Washington. Ablakwa stated that his petition was premised on the bank’s Anti-Corruption Guidelines.
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