Minority calls for forensic audit into World Bank, GARID operations

The Member of Parliament for Ho West, Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah, has called for a forensic audit into the operations of the World Bank’s country office and the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development Project (GARID).

Mr. Bedzrah on the Citi Breakfast Show on Citi FM on Monday told Bernard Avle that too much money has been spent on the project with little transparency.

Parliament approved an additional $150 million loan facility from the World Bank for the GARID project on Friday, May 17, 2024.

Mr. Bedzrah said the project should have been in phases, not its current compounding implementation manner, which he said is the reason he and the Minority Leader, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson have submitted separate petitions calling for forensic audits.

“I have requested and the Minority Leader has also requested that there should be forensic auditing of the World Bank’s Ghana office and the GARID project. We have suspicions that there is something that is not right and why do I say that, in my field, if you have a project and you design a project, the highest you can go is either 10 percent or 20 percent and a maximum of 30 percent for additional work, but in this case, you are going close to 60 percent for additional work, and that tells you that a lot of things were not considered at the initial stages, and so that project should be phased.

“That project should be a second phase and not the continuation of the other one and so if it is the continuation of what you have started, it calls for integrity and issues that need to be verified, which is why we are calling for a forensic audit.”