Serious irregularities in an award of a revenue mobilisation contract have fueled claims that somebody is behind the National Communications Authority manipulating the process.

Afriwave was declared winner of a revenue mobilisation contract despite being wrongly awarded 11 points during the evaluation process.

Obuasi MP Kwaku Kwarteng has laid the blame on the Communications Ministry for doing nothing to reverse the wrong decision although the minister is mandated by law to deal with such matter.

In all the six areas to award marks, Afriwave got much more than the maximum points possible.

Photo: Portions of the leaked report

In one criterion – Technical profile of operational support – in which the maximum score was 1, Afriwave got 5 points.

Obuasi MP Kwaku Kwarteng found it even more worrying that the so-called errors made one year ago were only detected after media attention was devoted to the report leaked to IMANI Ghana, a think-tank.

The NCA has come out to say the report is only a draft that has been doctored even though it had the signature of the Director-General of the Authority.

But in a contradiction, the NCA Deputy Director, Consumer and Corporate Affairs, Mawuko Zormelo, was emphatic there was no draft report.

He explained the mistakes in the report are ‘transpositional errors’, that is to say they were made when the results were being copied from an Excel spreadsheet.

President of IMANI Ghana Franklin Cudjoe who first published the leaked report condemned the NCA for awarding the contract to Afriwave.

“The procedure for getting them (Afriwave) that license was fraudulent,” he stated.

He said the evaluation report could not have been doctored because it was leaked to him by a member of the committee dissatisfied with the conduct of the NCA.

He noted the NCA has for some time now, been acting like a businessman when it is only established to be a regulator.

Raising suspicions further, the President of IMANI Ghana expressed doubts that the NCA with its considerable expertise would endorse a flawed process of selection.

The IMANI President believes the NCA is too competent and experienced to produce a shoddy report through which Afriwave emerged winner.

“I am beginning to wonder if whether the authority itself actually supervised the whole evaluation process," he said in an interview on Joy FM's Super Morning Show Wednesday.

But Mr. Cudjoe refrained from pointing out who may be behind the fraud. He said, “vested interests operate under dark clouds”.

Franklin Cudjoe’s theory is that the members of the Evaluation committee at NCA did a good job but somebody else prepared the final report and changed the points.

Kwaku Kwarteng agreed with Franklin Cudjoe that there are vested interests at the NCA who worked to fraudulently give Afriwave the award to monitor revenues from call data of telecommunication companies.

For Kwaku Kwarteng, the Communications Minister is culpable if “he [is] satisfied with the way things have gone”.

Hon. Kwaku Kwarteng

“If he doesn’t see that these irregularities are fixed, then he must be the one with the vested interest” he continued.

Kwaku Kwarteng is amazed at how the selection process could be so flawed and skewed to favour one company.

“The way this whole ICH has been handled from day one I have no doubt in my mind that somebody has an interest to ensure that somehow this company gets some contract.”

“There is too much bending over backwards to ensure that things happen and it is destroying the industry”.

 

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