Rlg’s borehole offer faultless – Baako

Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper, Kweku Baako, has defended the propriety of an offer by local ICT giant rlg to drill boreholes, absolutely free of charge, in all the 275 Constituencies of the country at the behest and choosing of the 275 legislators.

It costs between Gh¢6,500 and Gh¢8,000 to sink a fully and efficiently functional bore hole.

The company will therefore need to dish out an estimated Gh¢2.2m to sponsor the 275 boreholes.

The offer has been met with suspicion and cynicism by some opposition Members of Parliament such as K. T. Hammond who described it as “immoral”.

Other opposition MPs have expressed reservations of the timing of the offer, but say they will nonetheless avail themselves of it.

Some of the legislators have, however, out rightly rejected the offer on suspicion that it is meant to bribe them.

They wondered why the offer was being made at a time that a Select Committee of Parliament was investigating certain allegations of corruption against the AGAAMS Group, the umbrella parent company of rlg and other companies.

Asongtaba Cottage Industry, one of the companies under the AGAAMS group is under investigations in connection with a Ghc15m Guinea fowl project under a poverty alleviation module of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority programme.

SADA seeks to bridge the gap between the poor North and rich South.

Far less than 1000 birds were produced under the project despite the huge investment, thus necessitating a Parliamentary probe.

Also a supposed afforestation project under the same SADA programme being championed by Asongtaba has been described as a flop by critics of the AGAAMS Group, owned by Roland Agambire.

Furthermore, media investigations have revealed that the company has breached its contract with the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) to train some youths in ICT and mobile phone repairs.

The issue has been a major media topic for a while.

The suspicious MPs are of the opinion that the offer is to influence them to adopt a soft attitude toward rlg and the AGAAMS Group in general.

However, Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Water Resources, Works and Housing, David Assumeng recently clarified that the offer was made by rlg a long time ago before the guinea fowl saga emerged.

Kweku Baako also dismissed the suspicions when he spoke on Joy FM’s news analysis programme on Saturday June 22, 2013.

He said the clear distinction between the time the offer was made and the emergence of the guinea fowl saga, renders the suspicions untenable.

He said he saw nothing wrong with the offer.

According to him, he has documents to prove that the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament has written to rlg seeking sponsorship for some of its activities and therefore wondered why so much fuss was being made about the borehole offer by the same corporate firm to the legislators.