MoE spent GH¢2 million on unused Covid-19 Tracker App – Report
The Ministry of Education (MoE) at the peak of the outbreak of the global novel coronavirus pandemic spent GH¢2 million on the Covid-19 Tracker App that was never used, a report published by The Fourth Estate has disclosed.
The Estate’s claim comes after the Auditor General’s report on the country’s expenditure on COVID-19 revealed that the app developed to track COVID-19 cases in Junior and Senior High Schools across the country was never used.
in its research report, Fourth Estate said the app was intended to track COVID-19 cases in Junior and Senior High Schools (SHSs) was created after the government launched the national COVID-19 Tracker App in April 2020.
“The Ministry’s App was created under the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP). GALOP was a five-year project with the objective to improve the quality of education in low-performing basic education schools and strengthen education sector equity and accountability in Ghana.
The project was jointly funded by the World Bank, the Department For International Development (DFID), and the Global Partnerships for Education (GPE),” The Fourth Estate said in the report sighted by AcademicWeek.com.
Dubbed CovTracker, An audit report by the Ghana Audit Service on GALOP in June 2022 revealed that although the Coronavirus Tracker App which has been taken down was designed and developed, however, it was never deployed.
The Audit report indicated that the non-usage of the App and other information technology (IT) infrastructure developed during the COVID-19 pandemic “could result in waste of government scarce resources.”
“The anomaly was attributed to late deployment of these tools, lack of consultation and coordination between the procuring Agencies (Ministry of Education and Ghana Library Authority and the user Agency (Ghana Education Service),” the report indicated.
