Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has revealed that government’s plan to demolish the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) and construct a new one has been rejected.
The decision was taken on Tuesday night at the Foreign Affairs Committee and at the plenary, according to Mr Ablakwa.
The new edifice would have cost government €116million (GHS1.3billion).
The facility was built in 1991, to host the 10th Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.
It has since become the convergence point for many national and monumental events over the past 30 years.
However, engineers have deemed the facility unfit for purpose as structural defects have been uncovered during recent expert assessments.
On the back of this, funds were allocated as part of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s approved ¢574.7 million 2022 Budget, to see to the reconstruction of the edifice to prevent any looming disaster.
Minority insisted that the details of the procurement processes leave much to be desired.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Mr Ablakwa also noted that the Minority has blocked the decision to open new Ghanaian embassies in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago & Mexico.
He argued that government under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo cannot “still be pursuing fanciful projects” when it is “defaulting on its loan obligations & imposing crude haircuts, particularly on pensions for the vulnerable aged.”
According to the North Tongu legislator, such projects can be “deferred to better economic times in the future.”