WOYOME HAD NO CONTRACT,,,OSAFO MAAFO TELLS COURT

By Felix Engsalige Nyaaba

Mr. Yaw Osarfo Marfu, the former minister of Education, Youth and Sport, under the erstwhile NPP administration, yesterday told the Financial High Court, Accra that the state has never entered into any contract with Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, or his agents of the Vamed Engineering Company, by which reason the state had had to dash out an amount of GHC51C Million as judgment debt to him.

The former minister under who’s tenure of office that the entire transaction took place, was subpoenaed by the prosecution to appear before the court and give evidence as to whether government of Ghana had indeed enter into any  financial engineering contract with  Woyome, by which government has had to pay him per the consent judgment debt.

In his evidence in chief led by the Chief state Attorney and Director of public prosecution (DPP), Ms Cynthia Lamptey, Mr. Osaafo Maafo said, the state has never enter into contract with the accused as been claimed and that the company that Woyome alleged to had worked with and had a contract was never given any mandate to build stadia’s in Ghana prior to the CAN 2008.

According to the former minister whose evidence lasted more than an hour,  “though the Vamed Engineering (VE) and m-powapak Ltd, the companies under which Woyome worked as an alternate local director in Ghana was listed for the tendering process, the contract was not awarded to it.”

For him, “the contract was terminated at the tendering process; this was because the cost the companies brought at the bidding was far exceeding the CAF committee budget, so the cabinet sat at a meeting and decided to terminate the tendering process, so there was nothing like contract.”

He further told the court presided over by Mr. Justice John Ajet-Nasam, that after the cabinet has taken  the decision and terminated the tendering process, he as the then minister in charge of the process, wrote a letter informing the Vamed Engineering  about the decision of the cabinet as well as the amount of money which the company brought for the tendering.

The Vamed Engineering Company, he said, wrote an interesting letter to him, stating their position on the bidding and tendering process.

He said, in their response, the company stated that, “the Vamed Engineering is a company which is active in the sector of health care projects only and has no qualification and interest in the award of contracts for stadia’s.”

According to the witness, VE in its letter further stated that, when it got informed that there are hospital projects in relation with the CAN 2008, it immediately made an offer for six hospitals in 2003 which finally leads to the signing of a six contract which did not became effective due to lack of financing of the hospital projects.

The letter further stated that, when VE learned that only the stadia project but not hospitals projects will be implemented, VE stopped the search of the alternative financing of the contract with the government of Ghana.

The Vamed Engineering in its letter also stated that, it was not and was never in a consortium with Waterville and that therefore in its opinion the government of Ghana should deal directly with Waterville when it has anything to do in that regards.

The letter reads, “We would like to inform you that VE is not and was never in a consortium with Waterville and that therefore in our opinion your letter NO WE10/43/01 dated August 22^nd, 2005 should have been addressed to Waterville.”

For that, the witness said, the state has never entered into any contract whatsoever with the Vamed Engineering Company and that the state do not owed VE any financial debt as the accused alleged and used same to obtained judgment debt against the state.

Asked by the prosecutor if the accused was known to him and in what capacity, Mr. Osafo Maafo said, he knew Mr. Woyome  before the stadia s contract case came into line and that Woyome was actively involved in the state projects in building of Hospital and other health facilities as alternate director of m-powapak limited, Ghana.

 Mr. Osafo Maafo further told the court that, due to the short time period for the country to build the stadia’s and the financial constrained,  the then cabinet decided to search for a single or sole sources firm to execute the project in order not to run out of time per the CAF and FIFA obligation.

He said Ghana was selected to host the CAN 2008 tournament and by that, the country was obliged to build at least four sport stadia that can accommodate 40,000 spectators at a time per the FIFA rules of hosting of events of such.

He said as the minister in charge of the projects, he sat up two different committee, including financing committee and technical committees to look at modalities of sources of finance, to build the stadia’s.

According to him, due to the HIPC condition by the IMF on the country at the time, the state could not have gotten a loan from any other country to finance the projects and have to sources finance on what he said, “turn-key” condition from companies and firms that has interest in the projects.

Giving his evidence before the court, Mr. Osafo Maafo said adverts were put out for prospective bidders for consideration and possibly for the award of the contracts and about 22 firms applied, but during the selection process base on the various condition including financial capacity, technical capacity as well as previous work experience were all taking into consideration.

He told the court that, subsequently, the selected companies were reduced to four for the tendering process and the Vamed and m-powapak Companies was selected for the tendering process for the finance and technical sourcing for the four stadia’s, including Kumasi, Accra, Takoradi and Tamale.

That the two old stadia’s, the Accra and Kumasi was to be  rehabilitated to accommodate 40,000 spectators at a time and the Tamale and the Takoradi stadia’s were also to provide space for 20,000 spectators.

He said, due to the financial factors, he then prepared a memo to the cabinet and recommended that, any attempt to get another tendering process  would unduly delay the project and the country would face penalty by  both CAF and FIFA and that a sole sources of financing should be search for.

According to Mr. Osafo Maafo, it was during the deliberation on the sources of finance, that the former president , John Agyekum Kuffour brought in the Shanghais company, stating that he had been to China and has seen work the company executed and believed they could handle the CAN 2008 stadia’s projects.

He said it was as a result of that, he as a minister in charge of the project wrote a letter to the Public procurement Authority (PPA), per Section 41 of the PPA Act and stating the reasons why the state needed single sources to handle the projects.

The PPA, he said then approved the single sourcing for the projects and that was why the Shanghais Construction firm of China was given the contract to execute the projects for the CAN 2008.

He however, tendered in four documents, including the memo he prepared to the cabinet, a letter to the PPA, the approval letter from the PPA, a letter to the Vamed Engineering and the responds to the ministry by the Vamed Engineering on the contract.

After the witness had tendered in the letter from VE stating their uninterested in the stadia’s projects contract, the prosecutor sought the court for adjournment to enable her take her medication.

The defence did not object to the request for the adjournment and the court adjourned proceeding to July 17, for Osafo Marfu to continue his evidence in chief.

Woyome has been charged with two counts of defrauding by false pretence and causing financial loss to the state, but he pleaded not guilty.

He has since been granted bail in the sum of GHC20, 000 with three sureties, of which one was to be justified.