Policy think tank Strategic Thinkers Network (STRANEK) has called on Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to make public the cost component of the recently announced $2.5 million (GHS15 million) GhanaPost GPS app.

According to STRANEK, “having observed on various fora the doubts and raised eyebrows on the cost of the GhanaPost GPS app, and subsequent poor ratings by IT experts, we believe that this call to the Vice-President is necessary to help rescue a project that although well-intended is gradually sinking into the quagmire of perceived corruption and abuse of state resources.”

STRANEK said although it welcomes the initiative by government to solve the decades-old problem of property addressing in Ghana, it believes that a project that is meant to improve on the efficiency of the operations of both the private and public sector must not be bedeviled by a perception of inefficiency in terms of its pricing.

STRANEK in a statement has, therefore, urged government to, in a quick and transparent exercise, disclose the true and complete breakdown of the various cost elements associated with the project.

“STRANEK will also like to know categorically if there is anything proprietary about this project that warrants the cost currently being bandied about by government sources because if this projects is structured on existing platforms that are provided freely by various third parties, then what amount of work accumulated into the GHS15m contract price?” the statement asked.

A Ghanaian researcher based in the United States of America, Kingsley Komla Elikem, recently said government did not need to award a $2.5million contract to VOKACOM to develop the GhanaPost GPS app to be used for Ghana’s digital addressing system because that technology already existed on Google.

The app is meant to provide an effective means of assigning addresses to every location and place in the country.

Mr Elikem, critiquing the GhanaPost GPS app, said the technology already exists and, therefore, government and VOKACOM had not done anything new.