The Project Management Institute Ghana (PMI-Ghana) is championing an advocacy for the promulgation of a law that will regulate the management of public sector projects in the country.
This advocacy, the Institute says, has become very necessary, citing widespread inefficiencies and mismanagement associated with government-led initiatives.
President of PMI-Ghana, Frank Owusu-Asamoah says, as a professional body they have noticed prevalent excessive cost and time overruns in national projects. Many projects are abandoned or stalled midway due to lack of funds, hence sinking the scarce resources of the state..
Speaking to The High Street Journal at the PMI-Ghana February Meeting, which discussed the topic “Can Project Managers & Policy Analysts jointly save Ghana from bankruptcy?” the president also indicated some national projects also lack proper and comprehensive feasibility analysis required to make them successful.
This, he says, results in numerous projects of the state failing to impact and benefit the citizens as intended. Frank Owusu-Asamoah further lamented the deep-rooted political interference in public projects, which he believes has led to poor execution, inflated costs, and projects that ultimately fail to serve their intended purpose.
He further decried the lack of comprehensive stakeholder engagement in public sector projects and hence failing to garner the support of all relevant and key stakeholders.
“We have always known from our background that not all projects are being run well in this country, obviously due to the heavy political interference with our public projects. Many of the projects we have in Ghana are fraught with cost overruns, time overruns, as well as some of them, very feeble sources of income to fund such projects, which obviously look dead on arrival,” he recounted.
He added: “We’ve also seen situations where we do not actually look at the benefits and the value that accrue to the people. We also see very little comprehensive stakeholder engagement. You see projects that do not actually benefit the people they were intended for.”
To address these challenges, the president said PMI-Ghana is pushing for a structured legislative framework to regulate how public projects are conceived, planned, and executed. PMI-Ghana is convinced that a law that will regulate how national projects are managed, and with their professional input, will help address the overruns prevalent with government projects.
“We will keep on engaging committees. Any opportunity that we find, including the subcommittees in Parliament, with the hope that one day we will have a law on the management of projects in Ghana promulgated by the Parliament of Ghana to help curb some of these challenges that we have in our public space projects,” he noted.
PMI-Ghana envisions a project management framework where both private and public sector projects are executed with the highest level of efficiency, ensuring value for money for investors, stakeholders, and taxpayers.
Frank Owusu-Asamoah therefore indicated that the door of the Institute is opened to both public and private institutions, urging them to collaborate with PMI-Ghana to ensure better governance of projects across the country.
“These things have scientifically proven ways of going about it, and we as a professional body, we do have the expertise. We are available as a Project Management Institute Ghana, professional body to partner with them and ensure that our projects are run with the investments of our shareholders and stakeholders in mind. We will be able to safeguard the resources that they put in, and we will be able to curb the cost overruns and time overruns,” the President pledged.
As PMI-Ghana continues to champion a legal framework to regulate the space, it still remains whether policymakers will heed the call and take concrete steps towards enacting a law that could transform project management in the country.
