The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has challenged the Akufo-Addo government to immediately render account for monies collected by the Power Distribution Services (PDS) in its 7 months of operation 2019.

The party alleges that there have been some ¢1.5 billion collected by PDS in electricity tariffs and other charges over the course of its operations from March to October in 2019.

Addressing the press at the 2nd edition of the NDC’s Corruption Tracker Series in Accra Monday, National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi called for all the monies to be accounted for.

‘‘The total amount of monies PDS collected from consumers in the form of electricity bills, from March 1 to October 18, 2019, when the concession agreement was still in force, per our estimation, and from our checks is over ¢1.5 billion. But we’ve not heard any official communication from Akufo-Addo who touts himself as the paragon of accountability’ he stated.

Sammy Gyamfi added that this level of ‘corruption and naked thievery’ cannot be condoned and called for persons who were complicit in the ‘fraudulent power pact’ terminated in October 2019 to be made to cough out all monies back to the state.

He maintained that a future NDC government led by John Dramani Mahama will ensure that all these monies are retrieved.

‘If people have stolen monies in excess of GH¢1.5 billion from the state and have not accounted for them, like this PDS case we’re talking about, you can trust that the next John Mahama government will bring them to book’, he stressed.

The PDS saga

On March 1, 2019, the Power Distribution Services, a private entity took over the operations of the Electricity Ghana Company Limited (ECG) a government entity to be the sole power distributor to Ghana’s electricity consumers.

However, the concession agreement was short-lived, when PDS was suspended on July 30, 2019, after the government said it suspected the agreement was tainted with fraud.

The deal was subsequently terminated in October 2019 although the transaction advisor, MiDA, set up an investigative body into the allegations and cleared PDS of fraud in August.

The Energy Minister, Peter Amewu, insisted that the company was a fraudulent one, hence, government could not continue transacting business with it.