Politics

We spent less time scrutinising PDS agreement–Bawa concedes

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Bongo in the Upper East Region has conceded that amidst the fallout from the cancellation of the power concession agreement with Power Distribution Services (PDS) resulted in the lack of scrutiny of the deal on the part of Parliament.

He recalled that legislators spent less than three hours scrutinising the bulk supply agreement of the deal before it was approved and also attributed such occurrences to extreme partisanship in Parliament.

Mr Bawa, who is also a member of the Mines and Energy Committee, stressed that “the partisanship in parliament at the expense of national interest must have a second look since there were critical issues raised as some MPs requested convincing picture of the players in the deal”.

The agreement for a 20-year concession was approved on July 24, 2018, paving the way for private-sector participation in nation’s power distribution as part of the Millennium Challenge Compact signed on August 4, 2014, between Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the government with Meralco-led PDS signed the concession agreement with Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) on March 1, 2019, a year after winning bid.

 PDS is consortium between Meralco, Angola-based firm Aenergia SA and three Ghanaian firms namely TG Energy Solution Ghana, GTS Engineering Ghana Ltd. and TBK Ghana Ltd.

Mr Bawa called on the media to hold legislators accountable over types of agreements governments bring to Parliament and how fast they scrutinised them and quizzed track record as players within power sector, no satisfactory answers given to them.

“Some MPs also had issues with payment securities which were supposed to be pre-condition in the deal, PDS was supposed to furnish ECG with payment securities in the form of either demand guarantee or letter of credit issued by a bank, ECG was not getting securities but former Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko indicated to get it before assets were transferred, unfortunately, guarantee moved from bank to insurance guarantee.

“The insurance guarantee came about because difficulties experienced with raising bank guarantee, PDS appealed to use demand guarantee issued by A-rated insurance company, submitted payment securities in the form of demand guarantees issued by Qatari insurance firm, Al Koot Insurance and Reinsurance, which eventually became source of fraud after it was discovered there were fabricated letters and forged signatures. -citinewsroom.com

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