Minority dares government to go to court over Ameri deal

The Minority in Parliament has challenged government to take legal action against stakeholders over the $510million Ameri power deal if, indeed, they can prove allegations of fraud allegedly detected by the Addison committee.

The committee was set up by the Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko to review the contract.

According to the Committee, the contract, which was meant to be an intervention to mitigate the power protracted crisis (dumsor) was overpriced by $150million.

The Minority Committee on Energy, however, has denied such reports.

“If they read the contract again, they would know that establishing fraud is a basis for repudiating the contract, so, if they think that by the work of their committee they have established fraud, this is not the forum to vent their complaints, they should go to the court and say that because we have found fraud in the deal, we are asking the court to terminate the contract, they know they cannot do it, so what they are doing is a political agenda,” South Dayi MP Rockson-Nelson Dafiamekpor said.

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“If you recall, they said that they are going to review all the power sector contracts, about 42 of them, and, so, this is the beginning and we are waiting for them,” he added.

Meanwhile, former Power Minister, Dr Kwabena Donkor, under whose tenure the deal was signed,say the Mahama administration negotiated one of the lowest tariffs for Ghana as far as emergency power deals are concerned.

“The normal thing in the energy sector is that emergency plants cost more, the tariffs in the emergency [deals] are higher, and, yet we were able to negotiate a tariff under emergency conditions that is lower than all other tariffs which were established under normal conditions.”

Dr Donkor’s comments come in the wake of revelations of a 17-member committee set up by the Energy Minister to investigate the deal that it was overpriced by $150 million.