The Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Sam George has described as “plain theft” the controversial $89.4million contract between Kelni GVG and Government of Ghana.
A Haitian entity, Kelni GVG was awarded a contract by the Akufo-Addo administration for design, development and implementation of a common platform for traffic monitoring, revenue assurance, and mobile money monitoring and fraud management—a service already being rendered by Afriwave and Subah Info Solution.
Policy think tank IMANI Africa has since the signing the of the contract mounted relentless opposition to it, questioning the rationale behind it. The contract, according to it is a clear wastage of scarce public resource.
The opposition to the contract, the Communications Ministry said is unreasonable and that no amount of pressure will lead to its termination.
But speaking to Starr News’ Ibrahim Alhassan, the Ningo Prampram lawmaker opined that the current revenue monitoring contract and the one before it under the erstwhile Mahama administration in which he served as Presidential Staffer are “needless and complete waste of taxpayers’ money.”
He said: “I have held the position that the Subah deal signed under the NDC administration [and] this Kelni GVG contract that has just been signed are all needless and complete waste of the taxpayers’ money.”
The Ghanaian people, he said “do not need to pay any private company one cedi for revenue monitoring in the telecommunication sector” following Parliament’s amendment in 2013 of the communication service tax act, mandating the Ministries of Communications and Finance to build a common monitoring platform.
“That function must be carried out by the regulators in those two Ministries; the Ghana Revenue Authority for tax purposes and NCA (National Communications Authority) for revenue purposes,” he pointed out.
The solution, according to him, is common sense, not rocket science “but politicians will not apply common sense because if they do there will be no room for them to steal from the taxpayers of this country.”
“This $89.4million deal is theft. Plain theft. Same way the Subah contract was theft,” barked the former Presidential Staffer.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
