Auditor General accuses Zongo Development Fund of blowing GH¢700k on rent
The Auditor General has implicated the Zongo Development Fund of wasting GH¢709,000 on rent between August 2020 and August 2022.
The fund has been paying GH¢29,000 in rent each month since its founding, according to the 2020 Auditor General’s report.
In his remarks to the Public Accounts Committee, the Zongo Development Fund’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Arafat Sulemana Abdulai, explained that, attempts to find a permanent home had been fruitless.
“We tried with the Ministry of Works and Housing to see if we could get any of the government’s properties, but we were not successful. We also tried to get one on our own and the lowest we got was around $2.5 million because the landlords quote their figures in Dollars and looking at what Parliament approves every year for us, if we want to commit that much to office accommodation, it means the needs of our Zongo people will not be realized, and so we were not able to get one.”
“We also tried with the State Housing Corporation because we were aware they were building households etc. and so we approached them to know if they had any land anywhere they could sell to us, so we could start building our own office and the answer was in the negative.”
