The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is demanding that government gives a detailed account of revenue collected by the Power Distribution Services (PDS) during its operation from March to October 2019.
Addressing a press conference Monday, the party’s National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi said the fraudulent deal between government and PDS has cost the nation a lot of money.
They are, therefore, demanding the Akufo-Addo led administration to ensure that persons who were complicit in the deal, which was terminated under questionable circumstances, refund all the money to the State immediately.
“From our checks, the total amount of monies PDS collected of electricity consumers in the form of electricity bills was over ¢1.5 billion but we have not heard any official communication from the Akufo-Addo government even though It’s been well over a year since the notorious PDS concessionaire arrangement was terminated because of a fraudulent demand guarantee.
“For this matter, Ghanaians and electricity consumers ought to know the amount of money we paid to that fraudulent entity called PDS,” he said.
Mr Gyamfi further noted that government officials who were responsible to carry out investigations and indicate the inconsistencies of the PDS concession failed to do their jobs as a result, Ghana lost about ¢1.8 billion to the PDS deal.
He also accused President Nana Akufo-Addo of protecting the mistakes and corrupt activities of his appointees during the PDS agreement.
“But President Akufo-Addo always touts himself as a paragon of transparency and accountability,” he added.
He then pledged the NDC flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama will not be a ‘clearing agent’ for corruption in his second tenure of office.
The PDS saga
On March 1, 2019, the Power Distribution Services, a private entity took over the operations of the Electricity Ghana Company Limited (ECG) a government entity to be the sole power distributor to Ghana’s electricity consumers.
However, the concession agreement was short-lived, when PDS was suspended on July 30, 2019, after the government said it suspected the agreement was tainted with fraud.
The deal was subsequently terminated in October 2019 although the transaction advisor, MiDA, set up an investigative body into the allegations and cleared PDS of fraud in August.
The Energy Minister, Peter Amewu, insisted that the company was a fraudulent one, hence, government could not continue transacting business with it.
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