‘World Bank Hasn’t Dumped $125m In My Office’ – Freda Prempeh

The Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Freda Prempeh, has dismissed reports that her outfit has received an amount of $125 million from the World Bank to support a five-year initiative to train environmental inspectors to prosecute sanitation offenders.

According to the minister, the report is a misrepresentation of what the Ministry’s officials said during the training of environmental prosecutors in Tamale last month.

Clarifying the issue, she noted that the $125 million was the entire budget for a four-year Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) Sanitation and Water project that started in 2021.

She further explained that the training of the environmental prosecutors was just one activity under the capacity-building component of the four-year project.

She made this statement in Kumasi during the commissioning of 38 institutional toilet facilities across eight district assemblies in the Ashanti Region on Friday.

“Recently, we saw a viral video, a publication going around indicating that the World Bank had given the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources $125 million. Let me put on record here that the World Bank has not dumped any money in my office as is being speculated around that 125 million has been given to the Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources,” she said.

“Indeed, they have a project that together has about four components which sum up to $125 million which was started years ago, some being taken in Kumasi and some in Accra. And yet somebody somewhere decided to do his own story that $125 million had been given to the Minister of Sanitation. No such monies have been dumped in my office,” she stated.

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