A former communications consultant for the Energy Ministry and Member of Parliament for Bongo, Edward Bawa has called on the government to withdraw the renegotiated controversial AMERI deal.
According to him, the new arrangement, where a new company, Mytilineous International Trading Company, will take over the management of the AMERI power plant for 15 years is totally erroneous and unconvincing.
The contract which was signed in 2015 by the John Mahama administration with the Africa and Middle East Resources Investment Group (AMERI) Energy, to rent the 300MW of emergency power from AMERI has come under serious criticism from then opposition NPP, sighting issues of overpricing and value for money.
Under the new agreement, Mytilineous International Trading Company will pay $52,160,560, with government paying the remaining $39 million to the Dubai-based AMERI Energy to wash its hands off the deal entirely.
But speaking on Starr Fm, the Bongo legislator said “Where there was a lot of promises, the least we expected was what we saw in parliament when the minister brought this novation and amendment agreement to us,”
In his view, government should rescind on its decision and keep up with the former agreement by withdrawing the new agreement from parliament.
“My only advice is that the government should do the honourable thing, they should withdraw this thing from parliament and then let sleeping dogs lie, very soon this Ameri deal will be a thing of the past because we would’ve have taken over after two and a half years,” he said.
His comments are in sync with the Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Bernard Boakye’s, who asked Parliament to reject the renegotiated AMERI deal.
“We are committing to pay $50m for 15 years which is not on for the Ghanaian public and I hope Parliament will protect the public by rejecting the AMERI amendment,” Mr. Boakye said.
Also the Senior Staff Association and the Public Services Workers Union at the VRA have said the new deal “will bring more hardship to the good people of our dear country- Ghana.”
“In less than two and half years the AMERI plant would become a free asset to the nation under the Build Own Operate and Transfer (BOOT) arrangement, and therefore there is no need for another arrangement that would extend ownership to any other third party interest,” the workers argued