Workers Hijacks $86,000

Stealing and siphoning of monies into private pockets continue unabated at the Tema shipyard and Dry-dock in spite of a committee put in place to check these excesses. The Republic has uncovered the hijacking of contract proceeds by a worker of the partly-owned state company into his accounts. Invoices available to this paper indicates that, Mr. Edwin Sheshie, an employee of the Tema Shipyard with E/No, 404 as identification hijacked the proceeds of a contract totaling $85,987.50 to his private firm �ed� services. The contract was to cater for some items on board the vessel MV Tradewind Carribe from Glasgow, Scotland which docked at the shipyard from 23rd January 2009 to 14th February 2009. The final bill on the care-taker charges for the items on board was $198,003.50, which was supposed to be shared among the entire stakeholders in charge at the shipyard. However, one person alone has siphoned $85,987.50. The invoices submitted by �ed� services to M/V Tradewind Caribe did include Value Added Tax (VAT) charges and the state is said to have lost substantial revenue in this transaction. Mr Sheshie is not the only found to have awarded contracts to himself. Other officers including the Accounts Officer and some managers established private companies and have been awarding contracts to those entities in a clear case of conflict of interest. In most of the cases at the Tema shipyard, no procurement rules were employed in the award of contracts. It is believed that a self-seeking clique is busily operating at the shipyard where members only engage in outright siphoning of public funds into their pockets. The Republic was told that the clique operates under the pretext of machinery and equipment of the shipyard not functioning properly hence, private hands have to be employed to carry out operations. The workers have insisted otherwise, saying there is no problem with any equipment at the shipyard. The PSC Tema Shipyard and Drydock was established by the Nkrumah government as a potential entity in making Tema, the emerging industrial city. Part of its shares was later sold to the Malaysian company Plenan Shipping Company. An audit into its activities last year uncovered staggering revelations of financial fraud. The revelations ranged from outright stealing to the abuse of procurement laws. It also came to the force that officials of the shipyard deliberately established a slush fund to pay politicians. A committee set up by the Transport Ministry to review operations of the shipyard is yet to finish its work.