CORRUPTION AND NEPOTISM HAVE TAKEN OVER AKUFO-ADDO’S INTERVENTION PROGRAMMES – PRESIDENCY SOURCES

A senior staffer at the presidency has alerted of corruption practices by some officials in government’s social intervention programmes.

The Senior staffer who is also a special adviser to President Akufo-Addo on social intervention programmes disclosed this to close confidant after launching of the Nation Builders Corps initiative. He said government was weak in monitoring of the implementation of the programmes creating avenue for some officials to engage in corrupt practices.

He listed the corrupt practices as shortchanging, racketeering,harassment, nepotism as well as exploitation of the vulnerable.

The sources said some officials at the presidency had engaged the BNI as well as EOCO for monitoring. The sources disclosed that they identified six challenges relating to corrupt practices by some state officials. He disclosed that there are huge challenges with the school feeding programme and other intervention programmes. He disclosed that they have asked a private company to start screening the cooks and also train them and also strengthen the monitoring and evaluation because they keep seeing or hearing stories of negative happenings and have decided to curtail those.

He revealed that appointees of Government have taken over all the intervention programmes. “So far, about 90 percent of the beneficiaries are family members of the President and his appointees some who are already employed. He said the bane of some of the intervention programmes has been nepotism and a great deal of corruption. To him, so much corruption exist that the intervention programmes do not make sense anymore.

He said unless government takes better interest in moves to curb the corrupt practices, the state will continue to lose millions of cedis annually through corruot activities of those corruot government officials. He disclosed that some of the party footsoldiers who benefited from the various programmes, are still working at other places but still being paid by the agencies.

He hinted that, some party footsoldiers who are not qualified to be employed under NaBCo have already been recruited. He said this is going to affect the general recruitment exercise. He said the security agencies investigating these malpractices are facing serious challenges because of the involvement of the President, the Vice-President, the senior Minister and some Npp executives.