The Ghana Education Service (GES) is set to abrogate an ICT contract for Senior High Schools in the country more than two years after paying several millions of Ghana cedis to a service provider by name Eduvid Education Limited.
The deal signed on 13th November, 2015 was for the supply and Installation of an Information technology System for the country’s educational drive.
Despite full payment being made through the regional CHASS, the 2016 auditor general’s report revealed that the service provider had reneged on its side of the bargain even after repeated enquiries from school authorities.
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday at Takoradi, Director General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa said they have been left with no option to abrogate the contract and surcharge the service provider.
“This is an issue that has caused some challenges for us, we signed an agreement with Eduvid and the idea was that they were going to provide some internet services for the schools, whiles they have done that the schools will remit them.
The schools subsequently collected the money, the records that we have, we are still reconciling, for some schools they indicate that they have paid them, for others they have not, but generally they were not able to live up to the expectations of the contract. We have engaged them just last two weeks thereabout and we have given them some conditions, [we asked just one question and they said they want to retreat and come but they have not come back]”.
He also explained that; “What we really want to do is to cancel the contract and also surcharge them and take them through the appropriate processes so they refund the monies paid that they have, because even for the school’s where monies were paid to them and services were not provided or for some that services were provided, they are half baked services that you cannot even work with them.
Beyond that we also have a service which is similar to what they were supposed to provide, that is ongoing, so we will rather want to rely on that, that is Cenlos and then improve on that system to supply high boxes to our schools along that line, so effectively we are going to abrogate this contract and ensure that they go through the processes to do that” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa concluded.
