A member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) communication team, Ms. Ellen Ama Daaku, says it was completely needless for the erstwhile Mahama administration to sign numerous contracts including the GPGC energy deal when the nation was in serious economic crisis.
Madam Daaku said there were a lot of question marks in the provision made in the contracts for the nation’s exit which has led to the judgment debt when it was discontinued.
Delving into the issues that resulted in the abrogation of the energy deal with GPGC leading to a $170million judgment debt slammed on the nation by the Commercial Court of Arbitration in London the NDC regime signed numerous energy contracts in its bid to stop the erratic power supply.
“I remember that the previous government had signed 41 or 43 independent power agreements within a period of ‘dumsor’, when the economy was practically on its knees after admitting that the negotiation processes did not go well. What pushed us to sign 41 at that short space of time?” she added.
Contrary to the opposition NDC’s stance of consolidating Ghana’s power backbone in the future, Ms. Daaku maintains Ghana needed to attend to her immediate power crisis first:
“You haven’t finished solving your dumsor, you are in trouble and so you do not go and sign 41 or 43 contracts in a midst of a crisis. And you go look at all the contracts. I have taken a look at about three or four of them. Same format. The same exit clauses. The same, almost everything. Forty-three of them in a period you are going through such crisis and everybody is bringing everything. What actually went into signing forty-one? And you tell me that you thinking about the future and the fact that we will bring in excess capacity,” she added.
Ellen Daaku expressed regrets that Ghana is the loser at the end noting, “whether we like it or not, with the sort of exit clauses we had and the arbitration we went to do, we will pay this money. With what has happened, we would rather go into a negotiation. Obviously, going into negotiations will save us some money,” she noted.
She insists the erstwhile administration did the nation no good by signing those numerous contacts.
“They did not negotiate right for Ghana because if you put in such draconian exit clauses when you know the contracts can be abrogated, and then you put it in such a way that you cannot even have the arbitration here in Ghana. So they didn’t do well for us and we also didn’t do well by not negotiating,” she added.
By: Ernest Tetteh Kabu | Metrotvonline.com | Ghana