The Chairman of Parliament’s Committee on Assurances, Dominic Nitiwul, recently took on President John Mahama and his cabinet following the government’s termination of Zoomlion’s contract with the Youth Employment Agency (YEA). “Whatever decision you people took, you may have to review it because the assemblies are clearly not ready. They need to build their capacity before they can take over.
The way the Zoomlion contract was stopped without an alternative is part of the problems [the 2026 flooding] we have,” he said. “I’m sure the president will get that message from this committee,” he continued. “There’s no single person who has not realised that it was a mistake [to cancel Zoomlion’s contract].” Well, many people in Ghana hailed President John Mahama and still believe the contract was unconscionable and must be terminated.
The contract, which was fraught with corruption, stated that Zoomlion should pay the sweepers GHS250 cedis a month and keep GHS 600 out of the GHS850 allocated to each sweeper per month. But that’s not the substance of this write-up. In what appears to be a well-rehearsed and choreographed show, John Mahama’s Minister for Local Government, Ahmed Ibrahim, agreed with and praised Mr Nitiwul highly for saying the president and his cabinet made a grave mistake.
Ahmed Ibrahim called on the Minister of Health, who was presumably present at the hearing, to support him when he (Ahmed Ibrahim) tabled the motion in cabinet to bring back Zoomlion’s contract, as Nitiwul had called for. I have known Mr Nitiwul to be a level-headed politician, so I was surprised he stooped so low for the well-orchestrated propaganda for Zoomlion. Many people tagged me in the story published from his comments, and some sent it to me.
Instead of responding to his statement, I sent him a WhatsApp message to understand where he was coming from. In that message, I said: “Which contract are you referring to? Zoomlion still has the contract to collect and lift the waste.
Are you saying your assembly cannot supervise the sweepers? That’s the contract that has been terminated?” A minute later, Mr Nitiwul called me. Like many others who are being misled by Ibrahim Ahmed and the Zoomlion propaganda machinery in the media, he did not know that Zoomlion still had the contract to lift the waste to the final disposal sites.
Summary from source