Terminate PDS deal completely – Jinapor to gov’t

A former deputy minister for Energy and Petroleum John Abdulai Jinapor has called on government to permanently terminate the concession agreement with the Power Distribution Service (PDS).

It comes after government announced through a statement that the deal with PDS, who are now in charge of Ghana’s power distribution, has been suspended.

“The Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Finance and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Ltd. has suspended the concession agreement with Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ghana Limited with immediate effect.

“The decision follows the detection of fundamental and material breaches of PDS’ obligation in the provision of Payment Securities (Demand Guarantees) for the transaction which have been discovered upon further due diligence,” a government statement said Tuesday.

PDS took over ECG after its major shareholder Meralco Consortium from the Philippines won the Millennium Challenge Power Compact Two from the U.S.A. Ghana signed the Power Compact with the United States of America acting through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent United States government agency, on the sidelines of the US Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington DC on August 5, 2014.

Under the Power Compact, six projects were being implemented to address the root causes of the unavailability and unreliability of power in Ghana.

Speaking to Starr News, Mr. Jinapor who had earlier raised concerns over the PDS deal with Ghana said the red flags were there from the beginning but ignored by the government.

“I think that the time has come for us to terminate the contract completely and hand over to ECG. Let’s put a non partisan competent board together to appoint a managing director and give him KPI’s if he does not meet them then we can fire.

“Let me issue a caution to all of us, let this not be an attempt by politicians to take over ECG through the backdoor. Nobody should take this as an opportunity to appropriate ECG to themselves, we will not countenance that,” he told Francis Abban on the Morning Starr Wednesday.