As the PDS scandal lingers on without a sign of government’s official report, the Minority in Parliament is gathering signatures to get Parliament recalled over the suspension of the deal.
Speaking in an interview, Ranking Member on the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee and Tamale Central MP, Inusah Fuseini, said that the PDS deal raises important national issues, thus the need to recall Parliament to deliberate on the issue as well as other cases surrounding it.
“What we are doing is collecting signatures which the constitution allows. Whilst we will be on recess for some time we believe it is important to recall the House over PDS saga since the revelations coming out require national attention. We are therefore collecting signatures to get the required number of Members of Parliament to sign up and get the speaker to recall Parliament,” he said.
“We think that it is important for Parliament to take centre stage in this case and in other related cases surrounding the PDS agreement,” he told Umaru Sanda Amadu on Eyewitness News on Friday.
In July 2018, Parliament voted to pass the Electricity Corporation of Ghana’s (ECG) Concession agreement and following a competitive bidding process supervised by government and MiDA, PDS was selected as the concessionaire to deal with the managerial challenges in the electrical power distribution sector.
But, the suspension of the deal for fundamental breaches in the demand guarantee has sparked controversy in recent months.
Addressing why the urgent recall by the legislature, the Ranking Member stated that the Executive has dishonoured some powers given to it by the legislature thus the call for explanations.
“It is the legislature that gave the executive the power to enter that agreement on certain conditions and if those grounds have been violated then we need to understand why it was done,” he said.
Inusah Fuseini said they were confident that they will get the required number of 60 to 70 signatures to recall Parliament.
FTI report not the full picture, wait on final report – Gov’t urges public
A Report by FTI Consulting, a United States-based consulting firm which was commissioned by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) to probe the deal indicated that PDS duly won the contract to manage the assets of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and said insurance guarantees were paid to back PDS’s takeover of the assets and operations of the ECG.
But the government has urged the public to be patient and wait for the full report on the investigation into the suspended PDS concession debacle.
Last week, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the circulation of the leaked report was misleading and advised “everybody to just tarry whilst it [the full report] is all put together in the various parties.”
“To create an impression that it is the full embodiment of the government position on the PDS enquiry and we find that very unfortunate because that is not the case.”