Story: Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
The National Democratic Congress’s (NDC), Minority Caucus in Ghana’s Parliament is raising concerns over a looming judgement debt.
According to the Caucus, abrogation of the Accra Intelligent Traffic Management System contract without recourse to the law is likely to result in judgement debt.
The Ranking Member of the Roads and Transport Committee of Parliament, Mr. Governs Kwame Agbodza, explained that the cancellation of the said contract has led to the State being sued by the Chinese company, Beijing Everyway for a $50 million payment in damages.
Beijing Everyway is currently seeking redress at the London Court of Arbitration after its contract for the project was terminated and re-awarded to Huawei in 2020.
Speaking to the media on Monday, June 27, Mr Agbodza, who is also the Member of Parliament for Adaklu Constituency in the Volta Region, called on the government to take steps to avert the impending financial loss to the state.
“Somewhere in 2012, the government of Ghana entered into this China Development Bank agreement with the Chinese Government. Under that, there are different components, part of those were to improve traffic management in Accra.
Subsequently, Parliament approved the commercial agreement for Beijing Everyway to be the contractor of that component which costs about a 100million dollars.
When the government changed the programme was still ongoing. We are told that the developers have been working together with the Ministry of Roads. The Ministry of Roads and Highways is the parent ministry that has been supervising this project.”
“You may also recall that the control centre for this has been completed and inaugurated by President Akufo-Addo himself. But from 2019, it appears there have been some challenges which led to a decision taken in 2020 for government to unilaterally just decide that they were changing the contractor from Beijing Everyway to Huawei.”
“Interestingly, when they came to Parliament it was the Ministry of National Security that brought a new bill. We were surprised because it was the Ministry of Roads and Highways that introduced the bill which we passed and the implementation has started.”
“The result of that is that despite all the arguments that were made both by the Civil society, the media and members of Parliament, the Majority insisted that it was the right thing. We insisted on finding out what the Attorney General’s opinion was, they told us that Attorney General okayed the abrogation. It turned out that as we speak, Huawei, has taken over the project but nothing is happening.”
“Secondly, the Beijing Everyway company has sued the Government of Ghana and as we speak, they are in arbitration in London. From what I know they are demanding something close to $50 million in damages and loss of revenues, legal costs and other things.”