Ghana: Former President Promises To Investigate PDS Deal

Ghana’s former President and flag-bearer of the largest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama has served notice that his administration will probe into the cancellation of the Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ghana deal with the Electricity Company (ECG) if voted to lead the country again.

Eligible Ghanaians will be going to the polls on December 7, this year, for yet another general elections.

According to the former President, there are many unresolved issues surrounding the PDS deal, which was cancelled a few months after its operationalisation.

Ghana’s power distribution company, ECG, on behalf of the Government of Ghana and under the Ghana Power Compact II, entered into a concession agreement with Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ghana for period of 20 years.

Per the agreement, ECG was to be the assets owner while PDS was to be responsible for the distribution and retail business of electricity.
The agreement took effect from March 1, 2019.

However, few months into the operations of PDS, controversy started unfolding around the deal with the government alleging fraud in the deal.

The President, Akufo-Addo, later terminated the deal, citing fundamental and material breach of the agreement on the part of PDS.
Officials of PDS, who were not happy about the government’s decision, have since taken the matter to court.

However, speaking in an interview with TV XYZ and as monitored by energynewsafrica.com, Mr. Mahama resurrected the debate on the PDS saga, promising to open investigation into the issue if voted back to power.
“If I become President, we will investigate PDS especially when it is obvious that persons related to the President were involved in structuring the deal,” he assured Ghanaians.

The former President said there is enough evidence to warrant a probe of PDS.

John Mahama said there is the need for an account to be given of the monies collected by PDS during the time it was managing the country’s power sector.

“The people of Ghana need to know what happened because this was a situation in which the assets of a state-owned institution were being handed over to a private company. As I speak today, for the period that PDS collected money when they were running the ECG, monies that ran into billions of cedis had not been accounted for People cannot just pocket state monies and walk freely with it,” Mahama said.

Source:www.energynewsafrica.com