Terminate PDS agreement – Jinapor tells government
The Member of Parliament for the Yapei-Kusawgu constituency and former deputy Power Minister, John Abdulai Jinapor, has called for the termination of the power distribution contract between the Government of Ghana and the Power Distribution Service company (PDS)
John Jinapor is also asking government to subsequently hand over PDS operations to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), constitute a competent non-partisan board, recruit a Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer for ECG and make the Managing Director and his management team sign performance contracts, which are measurable, achievable, specific, realistic and time-bound to ensure the new management achieves their set targets.
His comments come on the back of a decision by government to suspend a power distribution agreement signed with the PDS after it detected “fundamental and material breaches of PDS’s obligation in the provision of Payment Securities (Demand Guarantees) for the transaction which have been discovered upon further due diligence.”
Former deputy Power Minister, John Jinapor, is however unhappy about the action by government and the subsequent justification. He says it is an indictment on the government of the day for failing to do proper due diligence before signing such an important agreement with the PDS.
Jinapor wants an all hands on deck approach in dealing with the challenges the suspension of the deal with the PDS may bring up.
“I know what I’m talking about, we will not countenance any attempt by politicians to use this as an avenue to misappropriate assets of ECG to any individual or company. This concession has failed, let us step back and allow ECG to take over the assets and run ECG in a competent manner, professional manner and in a responsive manner,” he said.
John Jinapor, in April, had suggested that the Power Distribution Service (PDS) lacked the requisite competence, financial capacity, technical knowledge and the experience to handle the duties of a company such as the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
“Back then I raised a lot of questions about this concession but all my efforts to get them to listen proved futile. If you look at the records, even at the floor of Parliament when then Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko and Ken Ofori-Atta submitted a joint memorandum for Parliamentary approval of the concession, I raised fundamental questions and indicated that we are heading on a crush,” he said.
He explained that the whole concession agreement was supposed to be a bank guarantee but the current government changed it from a Bank guarantee to an insurance and changed the Condition Precedent (CP) to a Condition Subsequent (CS).
This is to say that the Condition Precedent allows government to ensure the guarantee ought to be put in place, government ought to verify the authenticity of the guarantee, satisfies itself that the guarantee meets the conditions stipulated in the concession agreement even before PDS attempts to take over ECG.
He recounted a time in February when the deal had to be postponed due to this defective guarantee but the government went ahead and changed the condition precedent to a condition subsequent.
Mr. Jinapor asked worriedly, “If ECG was the assets of those who took that decision will they still do that? Will you take that decision and change the CP to CS? And how come it has taken them three months to detect this guarantee was defective?”