£73m loan for Old Fadama relocation project missing - Zongo Minister

Minister for Zongo and Inner City Development, has revealed that some monies allocated to the improvement of communities such as Old Fadama were misappropriated, a reason for the ill state of such communities.

Alhaji Boniface Abubakar Saddique, who was then the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing said, he signed a loan of £73 million in 2007 to relocate the Zongo community at Old Fadama to a new settlement at Adjen Kotoku in Ga West Municipal District.

Describing the funds as ‘missing’, Alhaji Boniface questions what the money was used for as it could not be identified with any project.

“In 2007, I signed a loan for £73 million to change this place and move the whole of this place to Adjen Kotoku… Where is the loan? We can’t trace it,” he stated while addressing Zongo dwellers at Old Fadama in Accra Wednesday.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Madina Constituency, decried how the Korle Lagoon Restoration project initiated under the Kufuor administration was sabotaged after the NDC government took over affairs of the country in 2009.

He said, “I even created a market in Ablekuma for the Komkombas to start before we finish with Adjen Kotoku. They politicised it. Today where are we? One step forward, five steps backward.”

The Minister argues that, the resettlement project would have alleviated congestion and the heavy traffic in town and present more job opportunities to the unemployed if it had not been stalled by the residents themselves and politicians.

He explains that, “I believe that by now all these cargos wouldn’t have come into the city. All cargos, articulator trucks coming from the North will just branch through Nsawam to Adjen Kotoku. Those coming from the southern sector like Takoradi, Cape Coast, Ivory Coast, at Kosoa there’s a bypass there going straight to Adjen Kotoku and to ease traffic in town,” he said.

He cautioned the residents to avoid working against government’s development agenda irrespective of their political differences as doing otherwise threatens national progress.