Common Fund snubs order to recover GH₵95m from Jospong subsidiary

An amount of GH₵95 million wrongfully and illegally paid to a subsidiary of the Jospong Group, remains unrecovered – four years after an unequivocal directive from the Auditor-General instructing its retrieval. The failure to recover the money is largely attributable to inaction on the part of the District Assemblies Common Fund, the agency which wrongly paid the money and was therefore obligated to get Sewerage Systems Ghana Limited, the Jospong subsidiary, to pay back what it had wrongly received.

The Auditor-General’s report of 2021 into the finances of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) revealed that Sewerage Systems Ghana Limited (SSGL) was paid several sums of money without basis and that the payments, made between 2016 and 2019, were not backed by any contract.

The report said the only justification for the payments was a letter from the Office of the President dated June 15, 2016.

That letter did not authorise the payment of monies to SSGL. It rather stated “the intention of Cabinet to provide a credit guarantee for the completion” of the Accra Lavender Hill Faecal Treatment Plant and the Mudor Wastewater Treatment Plant at Jamestown, also in Accra.

According to the Auditor-General’s report, the payments were made in breach of the 1992 Constitution.

“We could not establish the basis for the payment of the GHS95 million as support to a private entity with no government ownership,” the report said.

“We were also of the view that Article 252(3) of the 1992 Constitution does not permit the allocation of the Common Fund to private entities and would be a loss to the Assemblies if not recovered.”

In response to a Right to Information (RTI) request by The Fourth Estate, the DACF provided letters from its former Administrator, Irene Naa Torshie Lartey, requesting repayment from SSGL in August 2020 and January 2021, indicating that some attempts had been made to recover the funds. But there was no evidence of any further efforts to recover the funds after 2021, meaning that the Auditor-General’s instructions have not been carried out and the huge sums of money that could have been used on other important endeavours to benefit the Ghanaian public remains in the coffers of a private entity.

Another RTI response by the DACF indicated that the Fund intends to recover the GH₵95 million by retaining an amount of GH₵49,260,443.75 in outstanding arrears it owes SSGL.

These arrears accrued from services provided by SSGL to the district assemblies under the Sanitation Improvement Program (SIP) from the third quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2024.  However, even if all the payments due to SSGL are withheld, the company will still owe the DACF about GH₵45 million.

The DACF’s admission that it owes SSGL further raises a crucial question: How does the DACF owe SSGL when the Auditor-General has indicated that the Constitution prohibits the Fund from making payments to private entities?  

Moreover, the Fund stated in an RTI response to The Fourth Estate that it does not have contracts with SSGL and other subsidiaries of the Jospong Group of Companies.

“The District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) does not have contracts with the above entities under the Jospong Group of Companies. The MMDAs, which are autonomous, have various service contracts with the institutions in question,” the letter indicated.

When contacted, the Administrator, Michael Harry Yamson, was unwilling to speak to several issues when he spoke to The Fourth Estate on June 11, 2025. While admitting that failure to recover the GH₵95 million is an “infraction”, he was quick to suggest that any aggressive demands to force repayment could disrupt waste management in Accra.

“There is no other company providing sanitation [or processing faecal waste in the city]. That’s why even the Auditor-General didn’t say how the recovery should be done,” he said. “It says recover. So, we have to decide, working with the service provider, how we do the recovery.”

Records show that the DACF, under the Akufo-Addo administration, paid SSGL GH₵90,232,500 between 2021 and 2023 without making any deductions to offset the GH₵95 million the company owes the state. The DACF referred The Fourth Estate to the Ministry of Local Government when asked about the basis for these payments. The Ministry is yet to respond to The Fourth Estate’s right to information request.

The past government also paid at least GH₵200 million to SSGL through the Sanitation and Pollution Levy.

The Ministry of Finance disclosed that the Local Government Ministry paid GH₵156 million to Sewerage Systems Ghana Limited (SSGL) to clear arrears for the management of the Mudor Waste Treatment Plant and the Lavender Hill Faecal Waste Treatment Plant in 2021. On June 6, 2022, SSGL also received over GH₵26 million as fourth quarter 2021 fees for the same facilities.

Two years later, in 2024, SSGL and Integrated Recycling and Compost Plants (IRECOP), both under the Jospong Group, were paid GH₵276 million in management fees for operations at the Jamestown Integrated Recycling and Compost Plant and the Kumasi Liquid Waste Management Plant.

Through it all, one lingering question remains: if the DACF made payments from 2021 to 2023 to SSGL contrary to the A-G’s directive, what is the guarantee that the Fund will make the appropriate deductions now?

When The Fourth Estate asked the General Manager of SSGL, Lola Asiseh Ashitey, why the company has not settled the GH₵95 million yet, she said she lacked “in-depth knowledge” of the payments. Mrs Ashitey told The Fourth Estate that she will provide further details to clarify the non-payment. However, she did not provide these details after several follow-ups.