Audio By Carbonatix
The Chairman of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament, Samuel Atta Akyea, has called on the Committee’s ranking member to desist from imposing a personal view on the entire Committee with regard to the Genser Energy and Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) Sales Agreement report.
Mr John Jinapor disassociated himself from the contents of the report on the deal after the Committee concluded its 11-month-long investigation on claims of a $1.5 billion financial loss caused to the state
He insists the report does not accurately reflect his views and that of the entire Minority in Parliament.
According to him, the core view of the Committee was to assess value for money in the deal, however, that has not been tackled.
In a statement issued on Thursday, August 17, he urged the public to disregard the report.
But reacting to his assertions, Mr Atta Akyei dared Mr Jinapor to be courageous in standing alone rather than portraying a posture that he has the backing of the minority.
“You cannot force a solo view on the entire Committee,” he said.
He added that “It takes a lot of unusual professional misjudgment for you to say that let me pull the rest of the NDC members of the Committee to come to my side. They say they won’t come to your side. And I am sure they would very soon come out to say that he is standing alone,” he said.
Speaking on Joy FM’s News Night on Tuesday, Mr Atta Akyea said the report was drafted and finalised with inputs from the minority side.
According to him, there is evidence to that effect on the platform of the Energy and Mines Committee.
The Abuakwa South MP further stated that the rest of the Minority members – Edward Bawa, Kwabena Donkor, Amarh Kofi-Buah on the Committee disagrees with his assertion on the report.
“It was rather an underdog of the Committee who showed him that he has not read the entire contract that is why you are using one line item of the price of the gas to assess the position and he backed up. And he even told me that he agrees that IMANI, ACEP got it wrong.
“All was placed on the platform and later on, he said he was going to dissent and I said fine … I placed his dissenting opinion on the platform for the rest of the members to see. And I was gracious enough to have captured all that he said verbatim which can be found in paragraph 6.1 of the report,” he explained.
Also read: https://myjoyonline.com/parliamentary-committee-endorses-gnpc-genser-deal-debunks-us1-5bn-loss/
According to Atta Akyea, if Mr Jinapor challenges him with the truth, he would be forced to break parliamentary procedures to put their conversations in the group chat in the public domain.
However, speaking on the same show, Mr Jinapor insisted that there is no value for money from the deal.
He refuted claims that he was overruled from the Committee, adding that “nobody overrules the other in the Committee.”
He added that the minority side never disagreed with him on the matter.
According to Mr Jinapor, he never said ACEP and IMANI were wrong.
“I said that focus should not be on the numbers that ACEP presented. And to say that assuming ACEP says that the loss is 1.5 billion and you do a calculation and the loss is 1.2 billion, do you go ahead and say that the deal is good because you did not get 1.5 billion?” he quizzed.
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