‘GAF need no law to execute projects’
A former Army Commander, Lt Gen Emmanuel Alexander Erskine, has said the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) need no law to execute their own projects or engage in construction.
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According to him, the law which established the GAF, as well as the rules and regulations governing the institution, empowered it to engage in construction and execute its own projects.
Lt Gen Erskine was speaking in an interview with the Daily Graphic in reaction to a statement made by the Minister of Defence, Dr Benjamin Kunbuor, when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament on April 16, this year.
Dr Kunbuor, in an answer to some queries raised in the 2011 report of the Auditor-General on the GAF, said the laws of Ghana did not allow the institution to execute its own projects.
The report had indicated that some contractors, who were engaged to construct buildings for the GAF, had abandoned the projects.
The Minister said although the GAF had the capacity to execute its projects, unfortunately, however, the laws of the country did not empower it to engage in such activities. He said the laws needed to be amended.
No need for any law
But Gen. Erskine, who was twice Ghana's Army Commander, said it was surprising that decades after the GAF had been used in the construction of roads; bridges and houses, there would be calls for its empowerment to engage in such activities.
He said the GAF had engaged in construction in the past because it had and still has the power to do so by the law establishing it and its rules and regulations.
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He said the quarters in front of the Garrison Schools and just behind the Burma Villas at the Burma Camp were constructed by the Field Engineers Regiment and Works Services of the GAF.
According to him, former President Flt Lt J. J. Rawlings used the GAF to "open up" the Afram Plains, a situation which led to financial savings for the country.
During the time of Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, he noted, the GAF was used in the construction of roads, bridges and living quarters.
In his opinion, with the exception of former Presidents Rawlings and Nkrumah, no other head of state had utilised the GAF very much in such endeavours.
Lt Gen Erskine, who is also the first non-European Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) and the first Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said members of the GAF were very instrumental in the rebuilding of Southern Lebanon and in the late 1970s and early 1980s which had been totally destroyed by Israeli bombs.
"When we go into the field, we build everything ourselves. We build our own houses, roads, and bridges. That is what we do when we go on peacekeeping. Engineers in the GAF do that. And that is what we did in Southern Lebanon. We had had to rebuild the entire Southern Lebanon," he said.
Underutilisation of the GAF
Lt Gen Erskine was of the view that the GAF had been conspicuously underutilised in recent times and recalled that during the first republic, personnel of the GAF were used to install all equipment in Ghanaian embassies and high commissions in Africa, Europe and America.
"We also manned the equipment and later trained Foreign Service officers to take over the operation of the equipment," he said.