Members of the Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) group on the Joint Committee of Trade and Sports in Parliament have shot down the budgetary allocation of GH¢80 million for the National Cathedral project contained in the 2023 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government.
According to Minority, the state is too broke at the moment to even entertain pushing money for a national project whose construction have been shrouded in half truths, complete untruths and outright lies.
The Minority indicated that at the Committee, they were informed a colossal sum of GH¢339 million has already been sunk into the Cathedral project and yet evidence of how these monies have been spent could not be produced.
Deputy Ranking member of the Committee for Trade, Industry and Tourism and MP for Bole Bamboi, Hon. Yussif Sulemana who addressed the media in Parliament on Tuesday December 20 indicated the Committee was informed responsibility for the Cathedral has been moved to the Ministry of Tourism.
He averred that government officials could, however, not give response when they were questioned under which secretariat the cathedral was operating before its sudden transfer to the Ministry of Tourism.
He said, “This means that they only want to use the Ministry as a conduit to send monies to wherever they wish to use and we the Minority will not accept it.”
“Our policy is very clear. We have voted against it and we have said that we are not against the Ministry of Tourism budget. We will go ahead to approve the estimates but excluding the GH¢80 million but we are not satisfied with the explanation they gave us.”
Hon. Sulemana assured Ghanaians who are concerned about the budgetary allocation to the National Cathedral project that the Minority has voted against it at the Committee and stressed the side will not do anything that will not be in the interest of Ghanaians when it gets to plenary.
“We are prepared to ensure that whatever that is spent in this country is spent in the interest of the masses,” he added.
In a related development, a collation of pressure groups and civil society organizations (CSOs)is set to picket at the construction site of the National Cathedral today Wednesday December 21.
Pressure groups, Justice for Ghana and Arise Ghana in collaboration with the CSOs are demanding Parliament to reject the GH¢80 million that has been allocated for the project in the 2023 budget.
According the group, the picketing is to demand the government to completely take off the national cathedral project from state funding and stop the project.
The fence around the project site, they said, should also be pulled down for the Ghanaian public to see how the public purse is being wasted.
Members of the collation against construction of the Cathedral who spoke to the media in Parliament on Tuesday December 20 argued the amount of money that has so far been sunk into the project must be accounted for and retrieved, especially at a time that the Ghanaian people are being given unwanted ‘haircuts.’
Spokesperson of the group, Prince Derek Adjei stressed that monies spent on the Cathedral project must be accounted for whether spent in Ghana or the United States on the consultants.
“The GH¢113 million out of the GH¢339 paid to architect of the project David Adjaye must be retrieve,” he said.
The collation, he said, is sure the GH¢80 million allocated for the project in the 2023 Budget will not be accommodated but stressed they are demanding more than just a suspension of the project.
“We want a full time score of 0-1; that is 0 for the cathedral and 1 for Ghanaians,” he added.