The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) has confirmed being summond to court by BXC Consortium over the latter’s disqualification from the bidding process to manage the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

 “MiDA wishes to confirm that it has been served with a writ of summons by the BXC Consortium,” a statement signed by Pamela Djamson-Tettey, Director, Communication and Outreach said.

 “As the matter is now before the High Court in Accra, MiDA does not wish to prejudice the ongoing court proceedings and will therefore not make any comments on the matter at this time,” the statement added.

 MIDA last week disqualified BXC Consortium and selected Meralco Consortium, a company led by Manila Electricity Company from the Philippines to manage the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

Disqualification

A letter written by MiDA and addressed to BXC Company on April 12, 2018 said the company has been disqualified for failing to make its existing contractual relationship with ECG known in its initial proposals.

The letter, accused BXC Ghana of conflict of interest on the basis of its relationship with ECG – as a result, the company’s financial proposal was not opened for evaluation and was returned to the company.

The Coordinator of the BXC consortium in the ECG takeover, Daniel Azu, however insisted MiDA’s reasons for disqualification were completely flawed and baseless as evidence emerging suggests that it was done to favour Meralco Consortium.

“We are in court because we think MIDA has not been fair to BXC and we need them to explain to us the reasons why they have disqualified BXC. MiDA was aware BXC had other projects with ECG, and we made that clear to them from the beginning.

We do not know why they are bringing this up now. We can provide documents to show that in all the presentations that we did, we included this knowledge. We want the court to look at the merit of the decision,” Mr. Azu said.

BXC's response

BXC in a letter dated April 13, 2018, and addressed to MIDA said : “it had not misled MiDA and/or have not engaged, and/or are not aware of any actual or potential conflict of interest in anyway whatsoever and or howsoever. We state that we have always informed MIDA about our distribution contracts together with our previous pending contracts with ECG.”

“We add that by a letter dated 1st March, 2018, prior to the submission of the bid, we informed you of all past and present contracts between BXC Consortium and ECG dating as far back as 2005.

We add further that contrary to your statement in your letter under reference, in the bid submitted to MIDA, and specifically on pages 17, 76,87,88 and 95 of the technical proposal, we make specific mention of the contracts entered into between BXC and ECG. We would therefore urge you to reconsider your decision to disqualify our bid and request that you send us a response by the close of Friday, April 13, 2018,” the letter further indicated.