Mr Speaker, what has happened is that we are making rules continuously and it is even becoming impossible to execute a project. So, what is being suggested by the Committee, that I agree with, is that let us have a standing group who are authorised to do a value for money audit.
They would be authorised by the Institute of Surveyors, Institute of Engineers et cetera, so that an entity going through the process would just approach one of them to conduct the value for money assessment. Otherwise, as was said by the Hon Ranking Member, some of the projects are stuck because we only use one or two companies to conduct the value for money and they are stuck in the Ministry of Finance. The former Hon Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance is aware of this matter.
And I thought you would rather rise to support it other than saying what he said.
Mr Speaker, that been said, on this occasion, I hesitate to say that I agree more with the Hon Ranking Member than with the former Minister of State at the Ministy of Finance. We are working in the interest of Ghana.
This is because, procurement is important, but the process to even get the contract done would be about four years. We should not forget that under our Constitution, we have a four year mandate. Why is it that most Governments sign contracts at this time? It is because of these processes that they have to go through. We are just saying that if we simplify this value for money audit by identifying five to nine firms that have been prequalified, we could just go and pick them. They should be indigenous firms and not foreign firms.
In this value for money audit, AESL was contacted and agreement was not reached, and now they have contacted the Ghana Highways Authority to do it for them in which they are looking at whether they could reach agreement?. But it is not as if they did not make an effort. There are other firms, but some of the other firms available are not indigenous. But we would want to use indigenous firms, and we would want to use the Ghana High Ways Authority which is a State owned enterprise with engineers who have the capacity to do it.
Mr Speaker, having left Mark chapter 2 verse 27, I would now move to the issue of Ghanaian participation. It was mentioned by one of the previous speakers that it is important that Ghanaians participate
in this sector. If we are not careful, with a billion dollar sector, other people would participate in it; the money would leave Ghana and we would remain where we are. Whether it is a loan or it is paid directly, we would be the major people who would pay for it.
Mr Speaker, if you look at the contract itself, you would see that there are extensive provisions in the contract that seeks to protect the indigenous Ghanaians to participate. For example, in terms of unskilled labour, no non-Ghanaian would participate. In terms of skilled labour, it would be 50:50. However, even with the material that they must buy, we are saying that unless they could prove that they cannot get them from Ghana, they must buy it from Ghana.
Mr Speaker, the contract that is being done on Tema to Mpakadan rail line for instance, the sleeper was imported. The Indians are doing their own sleepers here. There is a Ghanaian company, LMI Holdings that build sleepers. With the line that was constructed from Takoradi to Kojokrom and to Sekondi between 2012 and 2017, the sleepers were imported from abroad. We have about five to six cement factories in Ghana and we have iron rods in Ghana, why can we not build the sleepers in Ghana?.
Mr Speaker, for example, we are insisting that this time around, the sleepers must be built in Ghana. From here, we must go to the next stage, and the next stage is that Ghanaians must become the main contractors. All the contractors that we give contracts to construct railways, when it comes to the last 10 per cent, there are specialist companies throughout the world who could provide that last 10 per cent which is what we call permanent way.
They come in and do the last 10 per cent and go. However, before that, I am told by the road contractors that what is being done in terms of the calbrite and in terms of the bridges is like doing a road. There was a time in this country where asphalt was done by foreign companies; Construction Pioneers and so on. I believe the first asphalt that was done by an indigenous contractor was during the Acheampong era from Accra to Nsawam.
The Ghanaian industry completely went down and we started using Construction Pioneers that did some of the work. In fact, during the era of President Kufuor, the Accra to Cape Coast road was constructed by Japanese.
However, today, I do not know the numbers but there are at least 10 to 15 Ghanaian companies that could
