General News of Thursday, 14 June 2018
Source: citinewsroom.com
2018-06-14
President of IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe
IMANI Africa finds it ironic that it is taking government weeks to locate the contract documents for the revenue monitoring Common Platform.
This is after Ghana Anti Corruption Coalition wrote to request the contract details on May 30, 2018.
Ministry of Communications’ response to the Ghana Anti Corruption Coalition on June 11 said: “We are currently in the process of locating the available records.”
“Folks, your ministry has signed a $178m contract with your money to locate in real time, apparently stolen revenues by the telcos. And yet it cannot locate all the documents it signed for the deal after two weeks,” a statement signed by IMANI Africa President, Franklin Cudjoe remarked.
IMANI’s concerns come after the Ministry of Communications said it had installed servers at the various data centres of mobile networks for the implementation of the revenue monitoring Common Platform.
The Ministry of Communications noted in a statement that what is to follow is testing and transmission, which are at various stages of completion.
But Mr. Cudjoe said credible media reports indicated that “persons suspected to be assigns and hirelings of Kelni-GVG have been visiting base stations of some telecommunications companies to forcibly connect their so-called monitoring devices into the billing nodes of the telcos.”
“In all the instances, these persons purportedly from KelniGVG had been prevented from accessing the base stations citing a court injunction against the project,” IMANI said.
The Think Tank urged all telecom operators, to stay the efforts of any of KelniGVG’s agents and stop them from interfering with their operational activity until the courts make a determination.”
Two individuals, Sara Asafu-Adjaye and Maximus Amertogoh, have filed a case restraining the government from implementing the Common Platform.
The two are concerned with the privacy of Ghanaians.
KelniGVG was given an $89 million contract to develop and oversee the Common Platform for the country.
The implementation of the Common Platform is in line with the Communication Service Tax (Amendment) Act, 2013, Act 864.
Most of the criticism of the deal has come from think tank IMANI Africa, which has raised privacy concerns and questioned the credibility of KelniGVG.
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.
Find below the full statement
IMANI Press Statement: Re Kelni-GVG, Telcos Must be Firm & Obey Court Processes
We have heard authoritatively from credible media houses that persons suspected to be assigns and hirelings of Kelni-GVG have been visiting base stations of some telecommunications companies to forcibly connect their so-called monitoring devices into the billing nodes of the telcos. In all the instances, these persons purportedly from KelniGVG had been prevented from accessing the base stations citing a court injunction against the project. See Kelni GVG attempts to plug into telcos database after deadline snub forcefully.’’
All telecom operators are reminded to be mindful of the court action against KelniGVG and its agents to stay the efforts of any of KelniGVG’s agents and stop them from interfering with their operational activity until the courts make a determination. See-Government sued to stop controversial Kelni GVG deal.
This determination is the legal request of the MoC to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the kelniGVG activity on the Telco systems will not be used to breach the privacy of consumers and users of telecom infrastructure in any manner whatsoever.
In a related matter, the Ministry of Communications responded to the request by 22 Civil Society Groups and think tanks nearly two weeks after the CSOs demanded to be furnished with all documents related to the Kelni-GVG contract.
In their response, Ministry of Communications said ‘’ we are in the process of locating the available records’’ Folks, your ministry has signed a $178m contract with your money to locate in real time, apparently stolen revenues by the telcos. And yet it cannot locate all the documents it signed for the deal after two weeks.
Please see Ministry’s letter attached.
Signed,
Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI