Ursula Owusu-Ekuful to appear in Parliament to answer questions on Kelni GVG
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The Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye has directed the Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful to appear in Parliament to answer questions on the revenue accrued so far by the Kelni GVG monitoring system.
The Minister, according to the Minority, has failed to appear in Parliament on three consecutive occasions to provide an account on the implementation thus far.
According to the Speaker of Parliament, the Minister was supposed to be present in the House on Monday but she could not honour the invitation.
Prof. Oquaye thus instructed that she makes herself available on Friday August 7, 2020 to answer relevant questions on the matter.
“I notice that no answer has been placed on record. I direct that the Minister must answer all the relevant questions and make herself available on Friday to answer the relevant questions,” Prof. Oquaye said.
Kelni GVG was contracted by the government to develop and oversee the Common Platform for traffic monitoring, revenue assurance and mobile money monitoring.
The implementation of the Common Platform is in line with the Communication Service Tax (Amendment) Act, 2013, Act 864.
A lot of the criticism of the deal, which is costing Ghana $89 million, has come from think tank IMANI Africa.
IMANI Africa also raised privacy concerns while questioning the credibility of Kelni GVG.
It has maintained that this deal mirrors the controversial agreements the state entered into with Subah Infosolutions and Afriwave Telcom Ltd in 2010 and 2016 respectively.
IMANI had earlier petitioned the Vice President to revoke the contract.
But the Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, in Parliament rejected allegations of corruption and underhand dealings in the award of the revenue assurance monitoring contract to Kelni GVG.
She said the accusations of corruption and underhand dealings are needless.
The government has assured that the necessary due diligence was carried out during the processes that led to the selection of Kelni GVG.
Kelni GVG’s monitoring system took off in 2018.
-Citi
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] 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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