Scandalous Daylight Stealing – A Manasseh Azure post

1. This letter was written by the Chief Executive Officer of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Elizabeth Sackey, to the Youth Employment Agency (YEA). The subject is well-known, but let me help you with the details.
   
2. The YEA has a contract with Zoomlion (since 2006), which states that Zoomlion should manage the cleaners and sweepers of all the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) in Ghana.
   
3. The contract says the YEA and the MMDAs should employ the cleaners and give them to Zoomlion to manage.
   
4. But, as this letter shows, the MMDAs and the YEA do not know the number of cleaners managed by Zoomlion across the country. The government pays Zoomlion in Accra based on the claim of numbers Zoomlion presents for payment. For a long time, the claim has been that 45,000 people are doing the work.
   
5. Zoomlion is paid 850 cedis per cleaner, but the contract says Zoomlion should pay each cleaner 250 cedis and keep 600 cedis as fees. The cleaners have no benefits such as transportation, health insurance or retirement package. If they fall ill battling the filth in our gutters and markets, they’re on their own.
   
6. That’s not all the woes these miserable cleaners go through. A letter I have intercepted shows that Zoomlion has not paid these cleaners for more than one year, even though the company claims the high fees and interest it charges the government is because it pre-finances the payment before the government pays later.
   
7. Because the slave wage of 250 cedis ($17) a month is too low and is not always paid, most cleaners do not go to work, as evidenced in this letter from the AMA Chief Executive.
   
8. But whether there are cleaners working or not, Zoomlion is paid the full amount by the number of workers it presents. To put it clearly, government officials such as the board members of the YEA, Ministers of State related to the programme and state officials paid to represent our interest know that there are not 45,000 people sweeping the streets and markets across the country, but they multiply that number by 850 cedis and pay to Zoomlion as its monthly bill.
   
9. In 2018, the YEA CEO, Justin Frimpong Koduah (the current NPP General Secretary), conducted a head count and concluded that the number of cleaners was far lower than what Zoomlion presented for payment. At a press conference in Accra, he said Zoomlion failed to produce its payroll to back its claim. He announced that the contract with Zoomlion would be discontinued, but that did not happen. The government continued to pay Zoomlion even though the company failed to authenticate the numbers.
   
10. In 2022, the AMA CEO wanted the list of the cleaners working in her metropolis, based on which money is deducted from her Common Fund at source and paid to Zoomlion.
    
11. The YEA, which signed the contract with Zoomlion and is supposed to recruit the cleaners for Zoomlion, told the AMA CEO that it did not know the number of cleaners being managed by Zoomlion, but it continues to pay Zoomlion based on the number Zoomlion presents. How do I know this?
    
12. The October 13, 2022 board minutes of the YEA captures the frustration of the YEA CEO, Kofi Baah Agyepong, who wanted the contract with Zoomlion terminated. In the board minutes, the YEA CEO is quoted as confessing that the YEA could not respond to the AMA CEO because the YEA did not know the people who were supposed to be working in the AMA area.
    
13. The board minutes said:

“The CEO further stated that management does not have the data to authenticate any claims from the service provider [Zoomlion], including the number of beneficiaries at post and working. Hence, when the Accra Metropolitan Assembly requested information on beneficiaries working in the metropolis, management could not provide them with the same. The CEO mentioned that this occasioned a meeting with the regional minister, who raised further issues with the quality of work done in Accra city and its environs. The CEO stated that management has the capacity to manage the sanitation [module] if given the opportunity.”

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14. In 2017, I produced a documentary titled “Robbing the Assemblies”. I revealed that the assemblies had resorted to employing their own sweepers to clean the markets and paying them, even though their Common Fund was being used to pay Zoomlion for the non-existent cleaners in their areas.

15. This means that because of the low wage of 250 cedis a month, which can be in areas for more than a year, many of the supposed sweepers managed by Zoomlion have left the job. But Zoomlion continues to receive payment for managing them. And the assemblies, which are already paying Zoomlion for this service, will have to incur additional costs to clean their streets and markets. If this is not robbing the state to pay a shady company, what is it?

16. Former President John Dramani Mahama knows about this theft because when I first revealed details of this scandal in 2013 as part of my GYEEDA investigations, he was the President of Ghana. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the NPP said at the time that President Mahama could not cancel fraudulent deals such as this because he was personally benefitting from it. The Akufo-Addo administration escalated the shady deals to Zoomlion when he won the 2016 election and got into office. And Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia knows about this as well.

17. Ladies and gentlemen, I have been consistently writing about this since 2013. The CEO of the YEA wants this deal canceled, and I have been told the Local Government Minister, Martin Agyei-Mensah Korsah, is not happy about it.

18. As revealed in my book, “The President Ghana Never Got”, the YEA CEO appealed to top forces in the Akufo-Addo administration, including the presidency, to help him discontinue this brazen theft of our money, but he did not get any support.

19. I don’t write this because I hate Joseph Siaw Agyepong, the Zoomlion CEO, who is a respected elder of THE CHURCH OF PENTECOST. The poor sweepers should not be treated like slaves. And the assemblies, which are paying for their streets and markets to be cleaned, should not use their meagre resources to employ additional sweepers because those managed by Zoomlion have left post, but the company continues to get paid.

20. In 2016, Akufo-Addo told us he was not a thief and would not preside over the stealing of our resources. We believed him and voted for him.

21. Mr. President, the ball is in your court.

By Manasseh Azuri