President of think tank, IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has lambasted government over its inability to locate documents covering the $178 million dollar KelniGVG contract.

The Ministry of Communication insists the contract is $89million even though IMANI believes the contract costs $178million.

In a response to a request by some 22 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) for documents covering the controversial deal, the ministry said they were still searching for the documents and will let the CSOs have them when the documents are found.

“We acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 30 May 2018. We are currently in the process of locating the available records and will get back to you shortly on this matter,” the letter, signed by Anastasia Marfo Attafuah, an official at the ministry, noted.

But the response has infuriated the civil society organisations with Mr Cudjoe indicating in an interview with Class91.3FM that it was a sign of “incompetence”.

Kelni GVG has a contract to build, operate and transfer (BOT) government's common monitoring platform for the telecom industry.

Under the contract, the company will offer four key services: real-time domestic and international traffic monitoring, revenue assurance, mobile money monitoring and fraud management, which they have started.

They are to do so in close collaboration with staff of the NCA and Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), on behalf of the Finance and Communication Ministries, who, the Communications Service Tax (CST) law enjoins to do real-time monitoring of telecoms traffic for revenue purposes among other things.

The terms of the deal have raised concerns among CSOs and anti-corruption agencies.