Kan-Dapaah is Deceiving Ghanaians -MP

The issue of a possible privatisation of the troubled Tema Oil Refinery to Samsung is generating debate in Ghana.

Although the Energy Minister, Albert Kan-Dapaah MP insists that there is no such plans of selling the Refinery, the minority spokesman on Energy, Kofi Asante MP is of the view that the Minister’s denial of the sale is a complete falsehood aimed at throwing dust into the eyes of Ghanaians.

Hon. Asante says he is aware of on-going negotiations by government to privatize TOR. “I can assure you that I am really on top of this subject to the extent that I am aware that government is going ahead and they have gone far in holding discussions with SAMSUNG somewhere in Korea to be specific and I am aware that the discussions that they are holding are that SAMSUNG would request to manage TOR by September this year on track basis, what we call Track Management.

I am talking on authority as the minority spokesman on energy. I am monitoring heavily how government is organizing the privatisation of TOR.”

The NDC MP, who has been very critical of the energy minister, was also not happy with what he termed as an attempt by government to deceive Parliament and the IMF.

“From a memorandum that was sent to Parliament as regards to the Economic Recovery Support Operation Loan (ERSO: 3), it said among other things that some of the conditions we are supposed to meet as a country are privatisation of Electricity Corporation of Ghana (ECG), privatisation of Ghana Commercial Bank and privatisation of TOR.

When it was sent to Parliament, Minority voted against it and Majority voted for it. It means that the majority had agreed to privatize TOR and therefore I don’t see why the Minister can say that TOR is not going to be privatized,” Hon. Asante said.

The Energy Spokesman queried whether government was deceiving the IMF. “Are we trying to deceive the IMF after we have taken the vote and sent the decision that we are going to privatize, that we have taken the conditions into consideration only to turn back to say that those decision that we took in Parliament upon the Majority voting massively for ERSO 3 and its conditions are going to be upheld,” he asked.

Hon. Asante reiterated that instead of the government deceiving Ghanaians, it should rather let the people know where they have reached so far as the privatisation of TOR, ECG and GCB are concerned.”

The Minority Spokesman is not alone in this revelation that there are plans of privatising the company. The editor of the Weekly Insight, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. also told an Accra-based radio station JOY FM that he has information about moves to privatise the refinery and will make documentary evidence to this effect available to the public pretty soon.