PRESIDENT MAHAMA, BRACE UP FOR BLACKMAIL

Dear President John Dramani Mahama,

I am writing to alert you to prepare for a wave of blackmail against the administration in the sanitation sector. Also, prepare for sabotage from some of your own appointees, especially ministers, and metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) across the country.

1. Last year, you took a bold decision to end the 19-year fraudulent arrangement, which used sweepers under the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) as a decoy to rob Ghana of billions of cedis, while the sweepers who worked under harsh conditions went home with nothing. I’m referring to the YEA-Zoomlion contract.

2. They say if you fight corruption, it fights back. That is true, whether the fighter is a journalist, an auditor general or a president. The fightback against your highly commendable action is billowing like a raging storm, and I’m writing to alert you and encourage you to stand firm, resist the blackmail, and call some of your appointees to order and action.

There’s no country in the world that has succeeded in managing sanitation by giving all the contracts to a single shady company that invests more energy in PR than in executing the contracts.

3. I have dealt with politicians at the highest level in the NDC and NPP, and not one of them ever spoke well of the contract or Zoomlion, a company many of them decry behind the scenes as a leech on Ghana’s resources. For reasons you know as well as I do, nobody had mastered the courage to touch that unconscionable contract until you acted.

4. When I sat with former First Lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo in December 2018 on this contract, she, among other things, said her husband had recently complained about how filthy the city was. (Details of that meeting and subsequent happenings are a chapter in my book, The President Ghana Never Got.) Nothing came out of that meeting, which was communicated to President Akufo-Addo with the written details and evidence I submitted to the First Lady.

5. When you took the bold decision to cancel that contract, honest and well-meaning Ghanaians celebrated you. Some did not go public, but hordes of them told me they didn’t think any politician would ever touch what they called a cash cow. In the same way, some people, including some MPs in your own party, ministers and some journalists, felt threatened by it. It’s needless to state their motivation.

6. That is why there is a campaign, based on dumb and fraudulent claims, that the recent flooding that resulted in deaths was caused by the cancellation of the Zoomlion-YEA contract. I have seen a video of the Minority Leader in Parliament, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, making this dubious claim. That claim is often peddled alongside the falsehood that the government did not put in place any alternative measures after terminating that contract, which is why there are heaps of garbage across the country.

THE BLACKMAIL

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7. Mr President, this coordinated campaign aims to incite public opinion against your commendable action regarding the fraudulent contract. The first sanitation minister, the late Kofi Addah, once said at a public forum that, after assessing the situation, he believed that Zoomlion was a major problem with Ghana’s sanitation sector. Shortly afterwards, there was a huge media campaign against him, leading to his replacement by Cecilia Abena Dapaah. She heaped praises on Zoomlion, enjoyed her peace of mind until heaps of cash in her room made the headlines.

8. Aside from the government, some businesses have considerable influence in the media, and I don’t know of any company more influential in that regard than Zoomlion and the Jospong Group.

Long before the Jospong Group acquired Metro, Samuel Agyemang, one of Ghana’s best journalists in this generation, was forced to publish the Subah Infosolutions scandal on YouTube and resign. This was after Metro TV, where he worked, refused to publish his investigation against the Jospong Company.

9. In 2017, the media ganged up against me when I investigated and published the “Robbing the Assemblies” documentary series. Even though the story eventually resulted in the cancellation of a $74 million fraudulent contract awarded to Zoomlion’s sister companies, the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) attacked me in a press statement, claiming I was targeting profitable Ghanaian businesses. (That was how I left the GJA and have never rejoined.)

10. In 2023, I was adjudged the overall winner of the Nobert Zongo African Investigative Journalism Awards. My winning entry was a compelling, evidence-based investigative documentary titled “The COVID-19 Fumigation Scandal Initiated by President Akufo-Addo.” That documentary was rejected by Ghana’s mainstream media. Like Samuel Agyemang, I publish the story on YouTube.

One trusted media organisation told me that Zoomlion had paid them to cover the COVID-19 fumigation exercises, so they could not publish a negative story about the exercise and Zoomlion.

Yes, the media can be bought in many ways, and it’s even cheaper to buy individual journalists. So don’t be surprised by the impending storm of disinformation aimed at inciting Ghanaians against your administration regarding the YEA contract cancellation and sanitation.

THE FALSEHOOD

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11. The general public is likely to buy into the lies because they do not know about the details of the cancellation. Sadly, some pronouncements by your Minister for Local Government, Ahmed Ibrahim, are not helping matters in this regard. He is quoted in the media for saying the following at the Sanitation Day programme last month: “So far, I have not set my eyes on any people who have been engaged by the assemblies to sweep our cities. So we have succeeded in terminating Zoomlion’s contract, but the assemblies have also not employed people to sweep the cities. Tell me, why would our cities not be dirty?”

This statement is false because, as early as 2017, assemblies were contracting their own people to sweep markets due to Zoomlion’s poor performance. The Kumasi Central Market, for instance, was swept entirely by the KMA’s own sweepers, and they lifted the garbage without Zoomlion’s intervention.”

Is the minister saying that no market or public place has been swept since the YEA contract cancellation?

12. It is also false to claim, as the minority leader did, that garbage collection and the operation of “aboboyaa” tricycles are a result of the termination of the YEA contract. The YEA contract was only one of many controlled by Zoomlion. Under that contract, Zoomlion was to supervise those sweeping the markets and public places.

It is also false that Zoomlion is the only capable company. Any idiot who gets a tenth of Zoomlion’s contracts can get the equipment Zoomlion has. Zoomlion first got a nationwide contract without a single waste management truck.

THE FACTS

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13. After they finished sweeping, Zoomlion had a separate contract to collect the refuse and transport it to the dumping sites.

14. Zoomlion has separate contracts to manage the dumping sites and to run transfer stations, in addition to contracts to undertake recycling.

15. By terminating the YEA contract, your administration has only handed the sweepers over to the assemblies to manage, rather than to Zoomlion. Zoomlion still has the contract to convey the garbage to final disposal sites. That contract, the Sanitation Improvement Package, has been signed with all the MMDAs across Ghana.

16. There is still evidence that, when the waste containers are full, Zoomlion does not lift them promptly enough. This is not new, but now the public is made to believe that when that garbage is seen, it is because you cancelled Zoomlion’s contract. They do not know that Zoomlion’s contract to transport the waste remains.

17. This narrative plays to Zoomlion’s advantage, and the company can win public sympathy from its failure to execute the existing contracts. Your appointees who are supposed to enforce the execution may appear reluctant for obvious reasons.

18. There is also the propaganda that your government has caused mass unemployment. Even before the cancellation of the YEA contract, the assemblies across Ghana hired and supervised their own sweepers and paid them higher than the YEA sweepers supervised by Zoomlion. I had video evidence of this from the AMA and KMA as far back as 2017. (Robbing the Assemblies-Part Three comprehensively captures this.)

MY SUGGESTIONS

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19. Your government should clearly communicate to Ghanaians the specific actions your administration has taken to sanitise the sanitation sector. We must know which contracts have been cancelled and which are still in place, and what is expected of the contractors. In this way, we can hold the right authorities accountable. It will also defuse the propaganda.

20. Pay attention to your MMDCEs who collude with corrupt entities to act against the interest of your administration and flout your directives must be dealt with. We know who funded their confirmation votes, but that should not stop them from acting in the interest of Ghanaians and taking your directives.

21. Some of your ministers, including regional ministers, are putting pressure on MMDCEs regarding sanitation contracts. Give the MMDCEs clarity on whose orders and policies they should follow.

22. Bring back the sanitary inspectors to the assemblies. As a child, I saw how effective the “Town Council” or “Nsamasaman” people were in enforcing sanitation bylaws in the districts. Choked drains, overgrown surroundings and dirty households were curtailed.

23. When Zoomlion was formed, the government stopped the assemblies from continuing with the sanitary inspectors. They gave that responsibility to Zoomlion under the Sanitation Guards contracts. Hundreds of Millions have been paid under that contract, but nobody remembers the last time they worked after the assemblies were asked to stop.

24. An MCE told me two days ago that his assembly pays Zoomlion under the Sanitation Improvement Package contract to lift waste containers to dumping sites, and Zoomlion lifts them once every two weeks. His assembly has procured “aboboyaa” tricycles to fill in the gaps.

25. “If we had our own trucks, we could be lifting the containers as and when they are full. We wouldn’t even need Zoomlion.” Considering the amount of money each assembly pays every quarter under that contract, they can easily buy their own trucks and do a better job. As far back as 2017, Tarkwa Nswaem Municipal Assembly was lifting its own garbage and doing it better than Zoomlion.

Mr President, poor sanitation breeds public health challenges, so don’t allow the saboteurs to lead us there and blackmail you into signing dubious deals. That is why I decided to draw your attention to this.

Yours faithfully,

Manasseh Azure Awuni.