Veteran journalist and Editor in Chief of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr has condemned government for awarding a financial engineering contract to Anator Holdings, a company owned by businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
Mr Woyome, who is already embroiled in a GHC51.2 million judgment debt scandal, had signed an agreement for the development of deep seaports as the Executive Chairman of Anator Holding Company Limited with former Minister for Transport, Dzifa Aku Attivor on behalf of government.
Anator Holding Company Limited (AHCL) according to its website offers management services to various Strategic Business Units and has subsidiaries in the transport, quarry and construction sectors.
An obviously incensed Baako berated government for the lack of due diligence in awarding the contract.
According to Mr Baako, Woyome, his companies and others associated with him had no credibility; hence government should not have signed the contract or any other contract for that matter.
This came at the back of Pressure Group, OccupyGhana raising an issue over the alleged GHc 35 million contract given to Anator holdings by government.
Mr Baako stated that “until and unless Woyome has purged himself of the liabilities he owes to the state, any state official should be cautious in dealing with him or his company or companies he is associated with.”
“Is that the only company that can do this business? Come on, some level of discretion is important, you avoid this company and this gentleman for now. There are thousands of other companies,” he lamented.
Mr Baako who was speaking as a panelist on Joy FM’s Newsfile programme on Saturday said the seeming complicity in the deal is noted in the striking semblance of the over 500 pages document that Anator Holdings had used to secure the contract which according to him should have raised a red flag.
Describing the deal as an insult to the Ghanaian people, he wondered why government will sign a contract with a company that is mounting blockades relatively to the recovery of state monies, adding that common sense should have served as a guide in such situations.
“It’s an insult to our intelligence as a people. It ought not to happen. It’s an assault on our sensibilities and sensitivities.
It’s a wrong policy decision; it ought not to be taken at all in the first place. Some discretion, some caution, some vigilance will tell you don’t touch this one at this time, Mr Baako added.
An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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