Ghana’s Covid-19 National Trust Fund Official Website Shuts Down

After a series of public inquisitions into questionable disbursement data of COVID-19 funds and the subsequent shut down of its official website, the National COVID-19 Trust Fund is yet to be re-operationalize its website to further give clarity to previously spotted anomalies in the fund disbursement data.

The public jury quickly went out on the Covid-19 National Trust Fund days after fund managers published a list of 310 benefactors and 22 beneficiaries of cash proceeds disbursed by the fund.

Some beneficiaries in the list published on the official website of the fund raised eyebrows within a section of Ghana’s media space and the general public with some questioning how a fund tasked to compliment governments effort in the fight against Covid-19 with focus on the poor and vulnerable rather sought to duplicate governments spending efforts, replenish the financial stock of seemingly wealthy institutions/organizations and parallel funds.
The public relations officer of the Covid 19 National Trust Fund, Kwame Bempah Osei, in an interview with Sammy Eshun, host of the Happy Morning Show, attempted to rationalize some of the disbursement made and also called for information published on the website to be disregarded. Follow-up efforts to retrieve the “real” disbursement figures available to the public relations officer has so far proven futile.

The official website of the Covid-19 National Trust Fund published cash donations received, a little under GHs60, 000,000 and total cash donations disbursed figure of GHs 53,366,082.50. The website has since been pulled down for maintenance.

About the Fund
The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Sunday, 29th March 2020, inaugurated the Board of Trustees of the COVID-19 National Trust Fund.

The Board of Trustees, chaired by former Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, were to receive contributions and donations from the public to assist in the welfare of the needy and the vulnerable. The other members of the Board are Archbishop Justice Ofei Akrofi, Mr. Jude Kofi Bucknor, Gifty Afenyi-Dadzie, Mrs Elsie Addo-Awadzie, Dr. Ernest Ofori-Sarpong, Dr Tanko. Mr. Collins Asare will act as Secretary to the Board.

President Akufo-Addo noted that, since the outbreak of the virus in Ghana, organisations and individuals have made donations, with others wanting to find out how they can also contribute to the cause. “I felt that the best way was to establish a public trust, so that the monies that come do not get intermingled with Government money and all of those problems. A public trust that is to be managed by an independent body of trustees, so that people will see that these monies are being properly accounted for and properly deployed,” he said.

The managers of the fund are yet to fully give accurate accounts of how moneys donated into the fund have been disbursed so far.