[2013]DLCA2949 • November 7, 2013 • Court of Appeal
KWAME BOADI ACHEAMPONG & ANOTHER vs. GHANA HIGHWAY AUTHORITY
The respondents, senior employees of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) in the Western Region, were implicated in a scandal involving the issuance of Interim Payment Certificates (IPCs) for road works that had not been executed. A Ministry of Transportation task force and a subsequent GHA investigative committee found significant overpayments to contractors based on these IPCs, which were essentially prepayments without proper guarantees or actual work done. The respondents were charged with acts of dishonesty related to the preparation and certification of these IPCs, leading to their dismissal by the GHA despite the disciplinary committee recommending demotion.
read moreTORKORNOO (MRS),J.A The facts behind the quarrel in this dispute as gleaned from the pleadings, testimonies and exhibits in the Record of Appeal (ROA) are as follows: The respondents in this appeal worked as employees of the Ghana Highway Authority, (GHA) the appellant. They were the maintenance engineer and quantities manager respectively of the GHA in the Western Region. Sometime in 2005, the Ministry of Transportation, under which the GHA operated, set up a Special Monitoring and Evaluation task force in the Western Region to inter alia, enquire into serious disparities between certified works on road maintenance and actual completed works. The concern was that in spite of billions of cedis spent by government each year in periodic and routine maintenance works to improve road network conditions, the conditions were not commensurate with the huge maintenance expenditure being made, and this expenditure kept rising year after year. The task force submitted a report that there ha...