The Minority in Parliament has declared total boycott of consideration of a private members motion for rescission demanding a reopening of the Ameri Power deal with government.

The $510m deal approved by the House in March, 2015 obligated  AMERI to build the power plants, own and operate it for 5years before finally transferring it to the government of Ghana.

A committee set by the Energy Ministry concluded in their report that the whole deal was worth 360 million dollars and recommended a re-negotiation.

But before that could be done, Member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa, KT Hammond filed a motion for rescission demanding Parliament takes a second look at the agreement citing several irregularities.

He referred the matter to the Speaker but that was met with stiff opposition by the Minority.

United in opposition, the group has announced their official withdrawal from the deal review.

Ranking member on the Mines and Energy committee, Adam Mutawakilu in an interview with Joy News’ Elton John Brobbey said the review has suffered massive procedural breach and they cannot be part of it.

Even though he admitted that the government has every right to review contracts he was quick to add that it must be done in a manner that is appropriate.

He said once the contract has been signed and approved by Parliament, no individual can now pass through the backdoor with a private member’s motion to have the contract abrogated.

Ameri debt

On Tuesday, workers of VRA held a press conference and among other things complained about the state of indebtedness of the Authority caused by the Ameri deal.

According to the workers, the Authority incurs $11.5million every month because of the operations of the Ameri deal.

In a period of 18 months the Authority has incurred a total of $218 million as a result of the execution of the ameri deal which has been active since January 2016.

With the deal said to be in force for a period of five years, the workers believe the Authority may be left in a state of collapse.

But the NDC ranking member on the Mines and Energy Committee Mutawakilu said the problem with the ameri debt is not because of the abnormality of the contract but rather a challenge with the sale agreement.

The chairman of the Mines and Energy committee, Emmanuel Gyamfi said the decision by the Minority to boycott the review process is unfortunate.

He said documents provided by a Member of Parliament, KT Hammond showed there were some misrepresentations in the AMERI deal and there was need for it to be reviewed.

He said it was the committee of mines and energy which first looked at the deal and recommended its approval but with the benefit of the new document, the same committee must be given the right to correct the anomaly.