News:
December 16, 2022
Madam Francisca Oteng Mensah, the Deputy Minister designate for the Gender, Children and Social Protection Ministry, has expressed confidence that the work of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) would exonerate her from any wrong doing in the conflict of interest case before the Commission.
“On the issue of conflict of interest, I am sure CHRAJ is a competent body, and with their investigations, they will be able to come out and definitely exonerate me,” she said.
Her Response follows a question by Mr. Alhassan Sayibu Suhiyini, MP for Tamale North, on whether the nominee was aware of a conflict of interest investigation by CHRAJ with regards to some three million Ghana Cedis budget approval by the National Youth Authority for campaign to educate people on how to protect themselves from COVID-19.
But Madam Oteng Mensah who admitted being the Board Chair and that the board actually approved the budget the purpose said she was not a member of the Entity Tender Committee.
She said, “I have no idea they were purchasing from Adonko Company Ltd at that time. It got to the time when we were in the peak of the COVID-19 season, in fact, if we all recall, getting access to sanitizers were a huge challenge, and so, at that point in time, everybody including even Members of Parliament were struggling to go anywhere that they could get sanitizers to give to their people”.
“And so, at that point in time, in that state of emergency, nothing of that sort came to me and so, I find it difficult to accept that there is any conflict of interest, it was afterward that I got to know that they even purchased some number of sanitizers from Adonko Company Ltd.”
The nominee said the NYA did not purchase from Adonko Company alone, and that, per her checks, it also purchased from other companies like the GIHOC.
The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) is investigating a conflict of interest issue concerning the purchase of quantities of hand sanitizers from the Adonko Company Limited by the National Youth Authority (NYA).
Ghanamps.com