Vice Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Samuel Atta Akyea has described GYEEDA as a “rip on the economy”.

GYEEDA, a social intervention programme targeted at the country’s unemployed youth, was hit by a litany of corruption scandals that caused the nation to lose millions of cedis.

GYEEDA underwent reforms and had its name later changed to the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).

Speaking exclusively to Class News’ parliamentary correspondent, Ekow Annan, Mr Atta Akyea said the Public Accounts Committee would, in the next few weeks, lay bare for everyone to see how GYEEDA was used as a vehicle to rip off the country.

“I don’t want to politicise anything. I am of the humble view that any department of government or agency in which it can be said that monies belonging to the state had been spirited away, either through negligence or plain theft, is not a good story for the financial health of this nation,” he stated.

The Abuakwa South MP said without financial discipline; Ghana will still suffer financial difficulties and mismanagement even if the US gave the country all the money in the world.

“So, what we intend to do is to lay bare the raw issues of how GYEEDA was a rip on the economy. I have never seen a situation in which an arrangement intended to alleviate poverty on the ground, as it were, became an avenue in which corporate bodies, handpicked, were rewarded with monies.

“There were situations in which they were even given loans that GYEEDA nearly became a financial institution in which a few people were given monumental loans.”