IT firm sues Police Service for breach of contract

Kumasi based IT firm, Waltergates Ghana Limited, has sued the Ghana Police Service and the Attorney-General at the Commercial Court Division, Accra, for breaching a contractual agreement between the two.

The firm, apart from seeking an interlocutory injunction on the Ghana Police Service to halt its ongoing online recruitment exercise, is also praying to the court to award it GHC38,967,000 in damages as well as legal cost and any other orders that the court may deem fit.

GHC13,967,000 out of the amount, according to the demands of the IT firm, is for breach of contract while the remaining GHC25,000,000 is special damages for the expenses incurred on printing the scratch cards for the exercise.

The company, according to the court document, has so far spent GHC4,000,000.00 on the Police recruitment online portal.

That aside, Waltergates Ghana Limited is praying to the court for a declaration that the decision by the Ghana Police Service to withdraw from the Agreement is a breach of contract and wrongful.

It also wants the court to order the men and women in black uniform to specifically handover the contract to them to perform.

Counsel for Waltergates Ghana Limited, Godwin Kudzo Tamekloe, in an interview with Kasapa FM, Thursday, said the IT firm was contracted by an agreement dated October 19, 2012, to provide online recruitment for the Ghana Police Service after almost a year of negotiations over the deal.

The intitiative, he said noted, was to assist the Police Service to move the process of recruitment of its personnel from the manual process, which had associated with it, logistical and administrative bottlenecks, to a techonology-based process (online portal) in order to avert the problems confronting the recruitment process of the Service.

The deal between the two companies, according to the court documents, was sealed by the then Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye and the Chief Operating Officer of the IT, Solomon Andom.

The agreement was witness on behalf of the IT firm by Emmanuel Attu whereas Ken Yeboah, Director Legal, witnessed for the men and women in black uniform.

Per the agreement, the Police Service were entitled to 60% while the Waltergates Ghana Limited was take home the remaining 40% of the proceeds from the two-year contract after declaration of all net revenue at the end of each recruitment exercise.

Each recruitment exercise was expected to rake in GHC25,000,000.00 per the projections of the IT firm.

However, Mr. Tamekloe said his client having printed the scratch cards for the implementation of the project, the next thing they could hear was a publication in the Ghanaian Times newspaper dated Monday, May 9, 2016, where the Ghana Police Service caused a notice to the public of its intension to recruit individuals for the Service using the online recruitment process and that sales for the E-Vouchers starts from Wednesday, May 11, 2016.

“Having printed the scratch card for the exercise and trained the IT department of the Police Service, we heard that they have cancelled the contract. So, we told ourselves that the only way we can get justice is at the court”, he noted.

The court is expected to call the came on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, having received the writ of summons.