MPs failed to perform their oversight responsibility on National Cathedral project - McCarthy
National Cathedral expenditure was captured in budget – John Kumah
Editor of the Hawk Newspaper, Charles McCarthy, has said that the minority caucus of parliament should be blamed for the alleged GH₵200 million, the government has used for the National Cathedral project.
According to him, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Members of Parliament should be blamed because they failed to question the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, about the exact amount of money the government was going to use as seed money for the cathedral project when it was mentioned in the 2018 budget.
"... who are we going to blame (for the GH₵200 million expenditure on the National Cathedral)? We should blame the minority (in parliament). The opposition NDC, they have to be blamed for this because they were in parliament when Ken Ofori-Atta told them the government was allocating seed money (for the National Cathedral).
“So, their oversight responsibility (financial oversight control) was to ask the minister the amount the government was going to use as seed money. Because the government had clearly indicated that it was not going to use taxpayers' money for the project,” he said in Twi in an XYZ TV interview monitored by GhanaWeb.
Also, the editor stated that the government’s decision to go on with the project was unwise given the current economic conditions in the country.
He added that the GH₵200 million the government has used for the National Cathedral Project could be used for the LA General Hospital which the government demolished and has failed to reconstruct for over two years.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Finance Minister, Dr John Kumah, has said that payments made by the government towards the National Cathedral are legal, contrary to assertions in the public.
According to the deputy minister, there is no need for the government's expenses to be captured as an expenditure item of any of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) before it is considered part of the budget.
He added that the only thing needed for the expenditure of the cathedral to be captured as part of the budget was for it to be mentioned, which was done.
"Even though it may not be captured as a budget item because it is not under any specific MDA, it can form part of government expenditure as long as we have captured in the budget that we were going to provide seed funding… You just need to talk about it, as we have done," Kumah said in an interview on Citi TV.
