I am ready to defend myself in court – Manasseh on Zoomlion contract

Investigative journalist Manasseh Awuni Azure has declared his readiness to defend claims he has made regarding contracts awarded to Zoomlion Ghana Limited, including allegations of overbilling and non-performance.

Speaking on JoyNews’ AM Show on Monday, June 16, Mr. Azure reiterated his confidence in his extensively researched reports, stating, “I am prepared to defend everything in court; there are documents to back them.”

Azure’s comments come amidst the government’s decision not to renew Zoomlion’s Youth Employment Agency (YEA) sanitation module contract, a move that follows years of the journalist’s persistent exposés on the company’s various agreements with the state.

During the interview, Mr. Azure detailed specific instances of alleged malfeasance, particularly focusing on fumigation contracts.

He recounted a scenario in which Zoomlion and its affiliate companies were awarded a third fumigation contract, even though Zoomlion already held two existing fumigation contracts in the same districts.

“If you put Zoomlion to go to Upper East and do this fumigation, when you go to Upper East, all the districts already have a fumigation contract with Zoomlion, and then all the districts were also covered under the Ministry of Health’s fumigation contract,” he explained.

Crucially, Azure alleged that despite these multiple contracts, there was no evidence of work being done on the ground.

“When we went, nobody said they saw Zoomlion or any of those companies delivering a service,” he claimed.

His investigations, which included police visits to assemblies across the country, revealed that local authorities were unaware of these contracts and did not witness any services being rendered.

He further highlighted Zoomlion’s response through its lawyers, who allegedly stated that the contracts “didn’t mandate them to be supervised by anybody.”

Mr. Azure strongly countered this, arguing, “You cannot go to a district and then do a contract of this nature without anybody seeing you, because this is something you are supposed to do in the open.”

The contracts, he noted, involved fumigating markets, gutters, public spaces, and toilets.

Azure also revisited his claims of massive overbilling, citing the case of waste bins.

He challenged Zoomlion’s justification that higher prices were due to the government not paying upfront.

“Something that is less than one Cedi… you are invoicing it to the government for 70 Cedis a piece,” he stated, alluding to a contract where an estimated $200,000 job was allegedly invoiced for $14 million. “This one is not $400,000, it’s not $500,000, it’s not even $1 million — [$14 million],” he stressed, rejecting the explanation that delayed government payments justified such exorbitant mark-ups.

The journalist also shed light on the longstanding issue of disproportionate worker compensation within the sanitation contracts.

He cited historical payment structures, detailing how, from the very first contract, a large portion of the government’s payment went to Zoomlion, with a significantly smaller fraction reaching the workers.