The Minister of Energy and Green Transition, Dr. John Abdulai Jinapor, has described as “damaging and revealing”, the report presented by the committee he constituted to investigate procurement activities of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in the previous administration.
Based on the content of the report, the Minister has disclosed he has given directives on certain changes that were being carried out at the ECG, saying he has asked for the plan to merge the procurement and estate units to be reversed.
He made the statement whilst commenting on the findings of the Committee on TV3’s News Central Thursday, March 27, 2025.
“Quite damaging, very revealing and if you read the report you’ll get very worried that over the years, ECG could do all these. So far, we have already given some instructions.
“For instance the decision to merge the procurement directorate with the estate unit, we have directed that that should be reversed. We’ve directed that we have a separate procurement directorate. In 2024 alone, they procured more than 100% of what has been approved to them by the Board,” he disclosed.
The Minister had earlier revealed in an interview on TV3’s Hot Issues that the Company engaged in “frivolous procurements,” leading to significant financial losses which warranted the constitution of the committee.
He has revealed that approximately 3,000 ECG containers are currently stranded at the ports, accumulating demurrage costs estimated at GHC1.5 billion.
He said he set up a committee to probe the ECG’s activities to ascertain what accounted for the huge losses stemming from the procurement of containers whose content were things the Company didn’t need immediately.
“It’s all because they are engaged in what I call very frivolous procurements. Now, they have about 3,000 containers stuck at the ports, generating demurrage of about GHC 1.5 billion, which is very unacceptable. Some of the things they’ve procured will last them ten years, some will even expire in five years,” he told Keminni Amanor on Hot Issues Sunday, February 16, 2025.
To address these concerns, he confirmed that a committee has been set up to investigate ECG’s procurement activities and the financial burden caused by the stranded containers.
“So we’ve commissioned a committee to investigate ECG’s procurements and the cost of these containers stuck at the ports. The committee is doing a very good job,” he added.
Meanwhile, the investigative report presented to him by the Chairman of the Committee, Prof. Innocent Senyo Acquah, disclosed that the ECG initially claimed to have 2,491 uncleared containers filled with cables and other essential equipment at the port. However, an independent audit at the port found only 1,134 containers, leaving 1,347 missing.
The Minister further added that “a lot of the containers that we found stucked at the port, the items, they didn’t need them immediately. Some of the units arrived, they had items, they claimed that they didn’t need the items but they were still offering contracts for similar items.”
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