Bawumia launches gov’t infrastructure website tracker; says it’s first-ever in Africa
Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia on Tuesday, 18 August 2020 launched a website to track the Akufo-Addo government’s infrastructural projects.
At a town hall meeting at the Academy of Art and Sciences, Dr Bawumia said: “To enable all Ghanaians to have access to and interrogate the data that we have put together, we are putting all this data on the website known as the www.deliverytracker.gov.gh”.
“That’s the website address”, he noted.
“This is a novelty”, the Vice President boasted, adding: “The infrastructure data, when you get to this address, can be obtained either by sectors like education, health, agriculture, and the rest” or “you can also search by region specifics as well or you can go by districts”.
“So, everything can be found on this website,” he added.
Dr Bawumia said: “As the name implies, the delivery tracker is a portal where the status of delivery of government promises and also infrastructural projects” can be ascertained.
“It will enhance transparency and accountability in governance”, the Vice President asserted.
“It will also enable the government to ensure that uncompleted projects are prioritised in the process of capital budget”, he noted.
“The portal is a living portal so it is going to be regularly updated”, he noted.
According to Dr Bawumia, “As far as we know, Ghana is the only country in Africa that has implemented this publicly-accessible delivery tracker for its infrastructure projects”.
“No other country has done so,” he claimed.
“I would like to note that we have not applied any standardised units for counting projects. For example, you may have a project that constructs 120 units of apartments and another project that constructs 25 units of apartments. They will be counted as two projects in the database. We are focusing on the description of the projects, their details and locations so that we can monitor”, he said.
He said “pictures and digital addresses are being added to each project on the portal,” to make it user-friendly.
“Our opponents are welcome to show us what they accomplished by way of infrastructure initiated in their first term in office. This is because virtually all the key projects they like to point to were completed in their second term of office. We are, however, happy to compare our three-and-a-half-year record with their eight-year record. The data will show that the infrastructure we have provided in many districts over just three-and-a-half-year, surpasses what they provided in 8 years. We have done more while actually spending less as a percentage of GDP because of value for money.
“Also, contrary to the propaganda, the evidence is that we have also completed or working to complete many projects that our government inherited. We have also put in place a solid base of digital infrastructure to propel the digital economy in Ghana.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I will like to note that we are not just building infrastructure, we are building a nation. We are building all this infrastructure while staying committed to our social contract to providing free senior high school education, creating jobs, transforming agriculture, industrialising the economy, sustaining the national health insurance scheme, digitising the economy, ensuring the public safety of Ghanaians, and keeping the lights on. We still have much more to do.
“The future is bright if we stay the course. That is why we are asking the good people of Ghana to give Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP four more to do more for you.”