President Akufo-Addo led-government has spent a whopping amount of almost GHC340 million on the construction of the controversial national cathedral by the close of December 2022.
This includes an amount of GHC113 million paid directly to the Consultant, Sir David Adjaye and GHC225 million paid directly to the Secretariat.
The Executive Director of the National Cathedral Secretariat, Dr. Paul Poku Mensah made this known in a status report on the National Cathedral delivered at the Bible Reading Marathon Thanksgiving Service at the project site on Tuesday, January 2, 2023.
“For purposes of clarity, I want to report a verbatim memo I sent on this issue dated 19th January 2022 and addressed to the Clerk of Parliament. The indication was that the government has given us GHC339 million and we could account for GHC225 million leaving GHC114 million missing. Here, I quote what I wrote to the Clerk. As we indicated to the Committee on Thursday, December 15, 2022, the total amount paid by the government of Ghana to the National Cathedral project is GHC339 million. This total is made up of the following: the amount paid directly to the National Cathedral Secretariat is GHC225 million. The amount paid directly to the Consultant, Adjaye Associates & Design Team is GHC113.040.54.67 million The two payments total GHC339.003.064.86.”
“So, there are no missing funds that could not be accounted for. Secondly, the detailed account for these funds was provided to Parliament on December 15, 2022, by the Secretariat. In the case of the accounting from the Secretariat, this involves among others, total payments made to the contractor, and total payments made to the Bible Museum and Biblical Gardens Design Team.”
Dr. Paul Opoku Mensah expressed displeasure over what he described as a misrepresentation of facts on the project by some Members of Parliament.
“While projects of this nature will always have discontent, we are nonetheless concerned about the misrepresentations particularly when it comes from Members of Parliament. For instance, the continued misrepresentation of the contract to the consultants is worrying as none of the amount bandied around comes anywhere near the contract amount. Rather than 34% that they said we’d paid the architect, actually, the contract figure is 12.5% when the Ministry of Works and Housing allows for 15.5%. And the 12.5% will not change irrespective of what happens to the total cost. More critically, the contract is not for an architect, but for a set of consultants’ services involving 15 international and Ghanaian firms of which Sir David Adjaye Associates is the lead consultant.”
