The management of the Jospong Group of Companies, the parent company of Zoomlion Ghana Ltd has dismissed reports that government unlawfully paid some monies to the company without binding contracts.
According to the company, all the monies received are legitimate and were paid through clean transactions following work done since 2006.
The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) at a Press conference last week lashed out at the John Dramani Mahama administration for paying GHS500 million to the company without any contractual agreement with the state.
In sanctioning what it described as the illegal payment made, the opposition NPP said the state gave the go ahead for the use of the 10% of the District Assembly Common Fund allocated to the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) to make the payment.
The Policy Advisor of the NPP, Mr Boakye Agyarko, who addressed the news conference at the party’s headquarters in Accra on Wednesday November, 16 said: “This amount is meant to pay for 45,000 workers who are actually on the payroll of the various district assemblies. So, the assemblies are responsible for paying the wages of the 45,000 and not the service provider. This act of corruption is a matter for which Ghanaians must demand and deserve answers.”
But the Head of Communication of the Jospong Group of Companies, Mrs Sophia Lissah in an interview with Accra-based Citi FM stated that the NPP claims are baseless.
“When I see people making statements that they don’t have facts to support; people making statements that they know all they have is the paper on the periphery, but the actual thing that is going on, they do not have an idea and they’re speaking about it, its heartbreaking. This amount[over GHS480 million] is not from 2013. we’ve said it’s an accrual. Accrual means that some are being paid but not all. So over the period it’s something that has accrued from back in the days till now. It is not factually true that because of a cancellation of a supposed contract we’ve accrued monies that are being paid us.
“Check with contractors in Ghana. This is something every contractor suffers and that is why most people go out of their way…So you don’t just say because government is not paying me then we’ll not do the work.”
