GETund Boss �Fed Up�!!!

If you are looking for the most frustrated appointee of the NDC government and you go pass the Administrator of Ghana Education Trust Fund Mr Sam Garba, then you may not probably get the desired result for your search. Tumbling from a confident government appointee to a hapless and hopeless Administrator of an almost collapsed state agency, Sam Garba seems to have hit the ceiling of pain and anguish and is now throwing his hands in the high skies with glaring signs of despair and frustration. It was more of a howling episode when The aL-hAJJ contacted Mr Sam Garba yesterday following threats by GETFund contractors and suppliers to hit the streets for non-payment of works they�ve executed for the state agency. Surprisingly, while many would have thought the GETFund Administrator like what many public officials would do; proffer one excuse or another hoping to calm nerves, the frustration, dejection, misery and resentment written all over Mr Garba was unimaginable The frustration and hopelessness in Mr Garba was more than that of the contractors who are threatening to take his outfit on in the coming days and on whose behalf we went to seek answers. �2013 was the worst year ever in the history of GETFund. Parliament approved GHC 730 million for us; the Ministry of Finance withdrew the money and gave as only GHC 180 million. You call the Finance Minister and he won�t mind you�. Never in the history of GETFund that it has been in arrears for over 10 months�, was the GETfund Administrator�s quick-fire response to our opening probing. Practically empathizing with the plight of the contractors some of whom are said to have passed on to glory as a result, the GETFund Administrator despondently lamented �the contractors we owe are our own people - they are Ghanaian contractors they�re not multinationals. They have taken monies from savings and loans companies to execute the contracts but there is no money to pay them. We�re killing Ghanaians business.� He added that per the Act establishing GETFund, when parliament approves monies meant for its operations, the Finance Ministry was obliged to release the money within 30 days �but that is not the case now, the money has been approved and it is locked up at the Finance Ministry, a dispirited Sam Garba yelled. Reports are that contractors who have sourced funds from banks and allied financial institutions to execute government projects under GETFund have their certificates piled up at the secretariat without any indications as to when they would be paid. Because of pressures from their creditors, some of the contractors are said to have died while others are reported to have developed live threatening diseases such as hypertension, stroke and diabetes. Some too cannot sleep in their houses or stay in their offices in order to avoid furious creditors. Aside the contractors, funds meant for Ghanaian students studying abroad are also in arrears for several months with some of the students facing ejections from their hostels and withdrawals from their respective schools.