The Deputy Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Stephen Jalulah, has rejected claims by the Minority in Parliament that the ministry failed to follow due process in the award of the Accra – Tema Motorway expansion contract.

The deputy minister said the financial agreement for the project had not been signed. What was signed last year was just an expression of interest between the ministry and the South African company, Mota Engil.

“Once the financial agreement is signed, it will be submitted to Parliament for ratification”, the deputy minister said in an interview with the Daily Graphic.

“At the moment, we have not yet sourced funding for the project and once we get funding we will go through the necessary due diligence”, he said.

He said the project, which was expected to commence in December, will follow all the necessary laws of the land.

“There is currently no contract signed, we are a responsible ministry, which does things according to the laws of the country.

Abrogation

The Minority in Parliament demanded an immediate abrogation of the $570 million Tema Motorway expansion contract awarded to Mota-Engil.

It said the contract, which is of an international nature, was awarded by the Minister of Roads and Highways, Mr Kwasi Amoako-Atta, without parliamentary approval but under the cloak of approval by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA).

Addressing the media in Parliament on Wednesday, Ranking Member on the Roads and Transport Committee, Mr Governs Kwame Agbodza, said the contract, per its current stature, was illegal and not binding on Ghana.

“The minister ought to have come to Parliament before entering into this agreement but the minister relied on so-called approval from the Public Procurement Authority (PPA).

“Indeed, PPA’s approval to entities to embark on sole sourcing does not negate the constitutional provision to seek approval from Parliament. So, clearly, the minister has breached the Constitution and should know that people have been to jail and have been fired because of the breach of this Article,” he said.

Ratification

But the deputy minister said, the agreement, which was in two parts, would be sent to Parliament for ratification when the funding was sourced.

“The agreement is in two parts, the commercial and the financial. The financial agreement will have to go through Parliament. Without the financial agreement, there’ll be no money to commence the project. The commercial agreement is what the ministry entered into in December last year. It is after we have got a financier for the project and entered into a financial agreement that the agreement will be taken to Parliament for Parliament to scrutinise and approve of it before the project can commence,” he further explained.