ACEP Want Officers Interdicted If Found Culpable In PDS Bad Deal

Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ben Boakye has attributed the suspension of government’s concession agreement with the Power Distribution Services (PDS) to sheer negligence on the part of some persons who were expected to monitor the process before finalising the concession agreement.

According to him, although ACEP is deeply worried by the outcome of the concession agreement, and the announcement came as a little surprise due to the actions and inaction of some related Government agencies.

ACEP said issues such as the failure by Meralco to meet the initial requirement of publishing the name of a local partner in the pre-qualification stages, leaves much to be desired.

Ben Boakye again revealed that although ACEP was selected as chair of the concession committee, it only met MiDA once.

“Last night, a major setback was introduced into the processes to improve the distribution of electricity in Ghana, i.e. the concession agreement with the Power Distribution Services Ghana limited (PDS) was suspended by the Government of Ghana. ACEP is not surprised by the development but deeply worried by the level of negligence that has led to this current situation. Indeed the finest conclusion anyone can give is that this represents the summary of the posture of MiDA in the events leading to the cancelling of the agreement.”

ACEP further demanded the interdiction of officials found culpable in the deal, adding that the background of beneficial owners of the local partner must be audited.

The Minister for Energy, John Peter Amewu in an interesting twist of events on the issue earlier on Wednesday said investigations conducted by the government established that a document that was presented by Power Distribution Service (PDS) as a guarantee for the takeover of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was forged.

The Minister explained that even though the document indicated that a company in Qatar has guaranteed for PDS, the management of the company told the government it had no knowledge of the document.

Speaking to Citi Business News, Mr. Amewu stated that the government will prosecute anyone found to have engaged in the fraudulent act.

“The investigations that was conducted through due diligence processes had established that the payment guarantee that was submitted by PDS to ECG was for some reasons had the word fraudulent in it. The executing authority denied ownership of such document and therefore had written to ECG to announce that it has got nothing to do with this document.”

---citinewsroom