General News of Wednesday, 25 November 2020

Source: 3news.com

US$4 million was stolen annually at the EC under previous chair – Majority Leader

Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu

The Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has alleged that some officials at the Electoral Commission (EC) under the leadership of the previous chair, stole 4million dollars annually on the back of servicing the data centre.

But, he said, the current chair of the Commission, Jean Mensa, blocked the thievery from festering.

The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs told TV3 Network in an interview on Wednesday, November 25 that the decision to stop the unending thievery resulted in baseless allegations and propagandist claims against her by the main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

The lawmaker for Suame noted that since leaving office, the NDC had attempted on countless occasions to smear Jean Mensa with several unsubstantiated allegations but their motive has not worked.

“They just don’t want to speak the truth,” he said.

“We had former Electoral Commission who were telling us they were servicing the data centre at the cost of four million dollars every year. Meaning people were stealing four million dollars every year from this country,” he said.

This he said was detected only when Jean Mensa took over the leadership at the elections management body in Ghana.

“We have a new Electoral Commission that says to Ghanaians that no, let us build a data recovering system so that when people succeed in hacking this new system we’re building, we would be better at backups.”