The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has challenged the Minority in Parliament’s calculation of an alleged GH¢6.27 million discrepancy in allowances paid to Ghanaians evacuated from South Africa, describing the analysis as inconsistent and misleading.
Media Relations Officer Fred Duhoe says the Minority relied on different beneficiary figures from the same documents to calculate alleged financial shortfalls, creating confusion over the actual amount being questioned.
He maintained that the figures presented by the Minority did not adequately distinguish between beneficiaries appearing on both payment registers and those recorded separately as receiving reintegration and transportation allowances.
The controversy concerns GH¢5,500 reportedly paid to each of the 1,964 Ghanaians evacuated between May 27 and September 4, 2026. The amount comprised GH¢5,000 for reintegration and GH¢500 for transportation.
According to Mr Duhoe, the Minority initially claimed that only 824 beneficiaries could be matched across both payment registers.
It consequently subtracted 824 from the reported 1,964 evacuees and multiplied the remaining 1,140 by GH¢5,500, arriving at an alleged GH¢6.27 million discrepancy.
However, Mr Duhoe argued that the same Minority subsequently identified approximately 1,500 individuals in the reintegration payment register and 1,001 in the transportation allowance register.
He questioned why these additional figures were treated as separate financial discrepancies after the initial calculation involving the 824 matched beneficiaries.
“All this is shifting the goalpost from one to the other,” he stated.
Mr Duhoe accused the Minority of repeatedly using the same overall beneficiary figure to calculate different alleged shortfalls without adequately reconciling the records.
He described the approach as a failure to apply consistent arithmetic to the information provided by the Ministry.
“They are not able to even do basic arithmetic with the documents we’ve given them,” he said.
The Ministry’s spokesperson also challenged the Minority’s analysis of flight records, particularly its attempt to establish the number of evacuees transported on commercial flights after accounting for those who travelled on chartered aircraft.
He insisted that the Minority should have sought clarification on the passenger figures before making public allegations about undocumented travellers.
The disagreement has become central to the Minority’s demand for an independent audit of the GH¢49.72 million evacuation expenditure.
The Minority maintains that discrepancies in the payment registers, passenger manifests and supporting documents raise serious accountability concerns.
Mr Duhoe, however, insisted that the Ministry’s records could be explained and that the Minority’s calculations should not be treated as proof of missing public funds.
