Yes! Allegedly! This time if you don’t add the allegedly they’ll summon you to court so “dem chop wanna money”….ALLEGEDLY
Yawa apae! Just read this! Long, but it’s worth it!
PETITION TO INVESTIGATE ABOUT GH¢683,000.00 FINANCIAL IRREGULARITIES AND UNFULFILLED CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENTS WITHIN THE STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COUNCIL (SRC)
We, the undersigned, hereinafter referred to as the Petitioners and representing the attached list of petitioners, are:
Adjei Kwame Nkrumah, a third-year student of the University of Education, Winneba reading Bachelor of Arts (French Education), and Alfred Bismarck Amevor, a fourth-year Student of the University of Education, Winneba reading Bachelor of Arts (English Education).
We have severally and jointly put this petition together seeking disciplinary actions from your highest office as the chief principal officer of the University of Education, Winneba.
Referencing Statute 36 (a) of the University Statutes, “the Vice Chancellor shall be responsible for discipline within the University and in this connection shall act in accordance with rules formulated by Council”. Similarly, the last sentence of Statute 36(d) states “For non-Senior Members the Vice-Chancellor shall be responsible for administering both major and minor penalties”. It is on this note that the Petitioners have petitioned your office seeking disciplinary actions to be initiated on the matters raised in this petition.
Sir, we believe it is time Management thoroughly probed the actions and inactions of student leaders as the canker of corruption, financial misappropriation and procurement breaches is getting to an uncontrollable level, and where applicable, appropriate sanctions be slapped on culprits to serve as a deterrent to others.
We present herewith item A – E as the issues on which we are petitioning your
office to seek disciplinary actions.
A. Withdrawal and Transfer of about GH¢75,000.00 from SRC Account
i. A transfer of GH¢33,950 was made out of the SRC Account at Capital Bank (now GCB Bank) with account number 2602018800011 on 25th April, 2017. The transfer was done without an accompanying Memorandum from SRC and/or Payment Voucher.
ii. Also, between 2nd May, 2017 to 18th May, 2017, when handing over has been done, three (3) officers of the 2016/2017 academic year executives of SRC namely Gertrude Mensah (SRC Treasurer), Isaac Afful (SRC Financial Secretary) and Jarvis K. Koffie (SRC President) withdrew monies from the same account as mentioned in (i) above to the tune of GH¢41,110.34.
We are reliably informed that the withdrawals were done without an accompanying Memorandum and Payment Vouchers, and without the certification of the SRC Audit Board Chairman. Moreover, the amounts so withdrawn were not captured as cost arrears or debts to be paid by SRC in its Final financial statement for the 2016/2017 academic year presented to the Local Assembly on 28th April, 2017. This means that the monies so withdrawn were unauthorized and illegal because the officers mentioned above had handed over to new officers of 2017/2018 academic year and no longer held office as at the time of withdrawing those monies.
B) SRC Magazine for 2016/2017 Academic Year
i. SRC 2016/2017 entered into a contractual agreement with one Eagle Media Consult for the production of 5,000 copies of Magazine for students at the rate of GH¢10.00 per magazine, bringing the total contract sum to GH¢50,000.00.
ii. Our investigations have revealed that, the contractor was to deliver the magazines by May 31, 2017. Unfortunately, the contractor has not been able to deliver a single copy of the magazines up to date. This implies there is a breach of contract.
iii. More so, our investigations have revealed that per the contract document, the contractor was to be paid half of the total contract sum only after he has produced a sample of the magazine for SRC. The remaining half was to be paid upon full delivery of the 5,000 copies of magazines to SRC by 31st May, 2017.
iv. Investigations revealed that, the contractor was paid 100% of the contract sum without satisfying any of the conditions so mentioned in
(iii) and that the contract sum was paid in excess of GH¢10,000.00 bringing the total payment to GH¢60,000.00. Also, the SRC Audit Board Chairman did not certify the Payment Voucher for that payment before it was made.
v. That same contractor was contracted by SRC 2015/2016 to produce similar magazines but was unable to do so.
vi. The petitioners would like to know who authorized the payment for the magazines and on what basis did he/she authorise the payments to a contractor who has not satisfy conditions in a contract document. Also, we would like an investigation to be instituted into the excess payment and for what purpose was those excess payments made.
C) SRC Pendrive/USB Drive
i. SRC 2016/2017 entered into a contractual agreement per documents we have sighted with Menphase Multimedia for the production of 15,000 pieces of 8 gigabyte customised SanDisk USB drive for students at a production rate of GH¢20.00 per piece. The total contract
sum was GH¢300,000.00.
ii. The retail price of the same description of USB drive in (i) on the normal market is GH¢20.00 so why will SRC enter into a contract for the production and supply of 15,000 pieces of 8 gigabyte USB drive at the same price as the retail price in the normal market? We believed the contract was overpriced.
iii. SRC 2016/2017 made a part payment of GH¢200,000.00 out of the total sum of the contract thereby remaining a balance of GH¢100,000.00 to be paid.
iv. According to the Financial statement of SRC presented to the Local Assembly of SRC on Friday 28th April, 2017, SRC had a liability of GH¢70,000.00 as arears to be paid for the USB drives.
v. Taking (iii) and (iv) into consideration, it implies SRC has paid GH¢230,000.00 to the contractor but only GH¢200,000.00 was reported in the financial statement as payment made to the contractor. We can, therefore, conclude that the Finance Committee did conceal a vital information from the Financial Statement giving room for questioning on the whereabouts of a whopping amount of GH¢30,000.00.
vi. Moreover, according to the Audit report for the period ending April, 2017 released by the Audit Board of SRC for 2016/2017 academic year, the contractor supplied 15,000 pieces of USB drives to SRC but 5,520 were defective. 4,000 out of the 5,520 pieces were then returned to the producer to replace them. The remaining 1,520 pieces out of the 5,520 USB drives were also to be returned to the contractor for replacement when he had brought back the 4000 pieces earlier sent for
replacement.
vii. Reliable information indicates that the contractor replaced the defective USB drives and returned it to SRC only to be ordered to send them back by some officers of SRC for the 2016/2017 academic year.
viii. However, checks at the SRC indicate that the total number of students who received USB drives from SRC was not up to 9,000 implying that the total supplied USB drives by the contractor were not up to the reported 15,000 pieces. Considering this, SRC has paid the contractor more than the products that have been supplied by him.
ix. Interestingly, contract documents sighted do reveal that, the contract of such huge amount was sole-sourced without recourse to any best procurement practices. Investigations do reveal that the procurement section of the University was never involved in the award of the contract but the SRC President did inform the Local Assembly of SRC that the University Management was involved in the award and execution of the USB drive contract with regard to procurement procedures of the University.
x. In addition, the contract documents sighted do reveal that, the contractor at certain points in the contract management used two different companies or represented two different companies: he used company ‘A’ at the start of the contract and along the line changed to company ‘B’.
xi. The petitioners are convinced the whole contract was fishy and
demands a thorough probing.
D) SRC Bus
i. On 3rd September, 2016 according to checks at the SRC, SRC 2016/2017 entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SAMNAG Ventures, an entity that supplied a Mercedes Benz Bus worth GH¢220,000.00 to SRC in the 2014/2015 academic year.
ii. According to the MOU, SRC 2016/2017 SAMNAG Ventures was to replace the bus they had supplied to SRC in the 2014/2015 academic year due to the bus’ deteriorating functioning state.
iii. The agreement was that SAMNAG Ventures was to replace the bus with two buses (35-seater Kia Cosmos bus and 39-seater Hyundai Aero Town bus) which worth must be equal to GH¢220,000.00 at an additional cost of GH28,000.00 to SRC.
iv. (iii) above implies that the buses to be supplied by SAMNAG Ventures are costing SRC a whopping sum of GH¢248,000.00
v. By the MOU, SAMNAG Ventures was to make the delivery of the buses latest by 30th January, 2017 of which it delivered one by the end of 2016.
vi. Checks at SRC indicate that, the bus so delivered to SRC at the end of 2016 by SAMNAG Ventures was a 15-year old bus which was repainted and supplied to SRC as a new bus. The cost of that bus on the market as at that time was GH¢18,000.00. Due to the old nature of the bus, SRC spent an additional GH¢9,800.00 on repairs and maintenance. That bus is not functioning as at the time we were writing this petition.
vii. Till date, SAMNAG Ventures has not been able to supply the remaining bus to SRC neither has the entity officially written any letter to SRC indicating the reasons for not being able to fulfil their
portion of the MOU.
viii. The petitioners are convinced that there is a breach of contract on the side of SAMNAG Ventures and there is the need to take a legal action against that entity for breaches in the MOU.
E) No Audit Report for three (3) consecutive years
i. Referencing Article 23 (6) of the SRC Constitution,
i. The University Internal Auditor shall at the instance of the Dean of Students or General/Local Assembly audit the accounts of the Unified SRC/Local SRC.
ii. Copies of the Internal Auditor’s Report shall be posted on all students’ notice boards after it has been certified by the Dean of Student Affairs and approved by the
General/Local Assembly.
iii. In pursuance of sub-clause (i) and (ii) supra, the SRC Audit Board shall with the approval of the General/Local Assembly make a report to the Vice Chancellor through the Dean of Student Affairs for the redemption of all monies found to have been misappropriated or all accounts found to have been rendered vitiated by corruption.
iv. The out-going SRC/Local SRC Executive shall prepare a post audited expenditure account duly signed by the SRC President and countersigned by the University Internal Auditor, before leaving office finally.
ii. Sir, for the past three (3) years SRC has been paying an auditing fees of not less than GH¢2,000.00 to the University’s Internal Audit Section to audit SRC accounts but they have not been doing so. They take the monies paid by SRC and refuse to audit SRC accounts thereby making it difficult to probe further for financial irregularities that have been perpetuated by out-going SRC
executives.
iii. For the past three (3) years, outgoing SRC executives sent their books of account to the University Internal Audit section for auditing and those documents were never acted upon by the
University Internal Audit section neither were the documents returned to SRC.
iv. This has caused new or incoming SRC executives to open new books of account each academic year. By this, they are unable to trace past financial transactions that were carried out by out-going
SRC executives neither are they able to probe for bad transactions.
v. This phenomenon is not helping SRC in its financial management and needs an urgent intervention from your office so that out-going executives can be duly audited and held accountable for any financial misappropriation.
Sir, for the issues raised in A – E, the petitioners would like to seek the following reliefs:
1. That a Disciplinary Committee is constituted to probe further into the above-stated issues.
2. That the following officers of SRC 2016/2017 be invited to answer questions on the issues so raised before the Disciplinary Committee:
a) SRC President – Jarvis K. Koffie
b) SRC Vice President/Finance Committee Chairperson – Emmanuel K. Amoako
c) SRC Secretary – Ebenezer Cudjoe
d) SRC Financial Secretary – Isaac Afful
e) SRC Treasurer – Gertrude Mensah
f) Finance Committee Members
g) Executive Committee members
h) SRC Council Attorney – Gaou Sapaku
i) Audit Board Chairperson – Jehu-Appiah Jojo
3. That the Disciplinary Committee should probe the above officers for financial misappropriation and issues of corruption based on the issues raised above.
4. That sanctions or penalties should be slapped on anyone found culpable of any financial misappropriation and corruption as prescribed by the laws of the University.
5. That the Disciplinary Committee sitting should be an open sitting where individuals can come and testify or give evidence to support the issues raised and/or witness the proceedings of the Disciplinary Committee.
6. That a copy of the Disciplinary Committee report be given to the SRC Local Assembly for adoption to serve as a reference material for further action it intends to take in the management of SRC.
7. That copies of the Disciplinary Committee report be published on the University website and all student notice boards.
8. That the period of work of the Disciplinary Committee should not exceed Fourteen (14) working days.
9. That the University should take a legal action against the contractors who have not been able to fulfil the contractual agreements raised in the issues above.
We would like to state that as petitioners, we reserve the right to seek redress from any external body outside the university including but not limited to the Courts of Judicature, Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) should:
a) Our petition be not attended to within a period of Fourteen (14) days including weekends from the date of filing of this petition.
b) We be dissatisfied with the processes and procedures adopted by the University to address the issues raised in A – E above. The petitioners count on your usual cooperation and prompt action. Find attached the list of signatures of petitioners.
Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Adjei Kwame Nkrumah
(1st Petitioner)
Phone: +233 (0) 243 033 486
Email: [email protected]
Alfred Bismarck Amevor
(2nd Petitioner)
Phone: +233 (0)242260932
Email: [email protected]
Cc: Chairman, University Governing Council
Jarvis and his team…what are we saying to this?
If you have a story you want to share with Kuulpeeps and the world, please do hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or on WhatsApp (0500-002686)
