SOFTtribe’s troubles blot on Bawumia’s e-solutions campaign – IMANI

President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe says the standoff between software development company, SOFTtribe and Ghana Water Company Limited(GWCL) has smeared the e-solutions campaign of the Vice-President.

“The Vice-President cannot be championing a bevy of e-solutions to stimulate growth, backed by innovation, receiving accolades in the process and just look on for the annihilation of a locally grown tool to deal with a public utility’s enigma- how to truly account for decades of wasteful public investment into getting it efficient, which Ghana Water had been until Softribe gave it life.” Cudjoe wrote on Facebook hours ago.

The Ghana Water Company Limited has said that its decision to terminate its contract with local IT firm, SOFTtribe Limited was in the national interest.

According to GWCL, the termination was long overdue due to the many challenges SOFTtribe’s e-billing system was fraught with.

National Security Operatives conducted an operation to secure databases belonging to the Ghana Water Company Limited, GWCL from an Accra based IT firm, Softtribe.

The operation which followed a complaint by the Ghana Water Company to National Security was to safeguard the databases access to which had been deliberately blocked by the company.

But the IMANI Boss noted:” Absolutely nothing as has been explained by Ghana Water for its singular and treacherous economic decision to terminate Softribe’s contract is convincing.”

He added "These disruptive behaviours feed into the narratives for ranking Ghana on economic indeces-such as the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business. We just lost four places this year-from 114th position to 118th in 2019. And I expect the President to stop this symbolic embarrassment to his Ghana Beyond Aid- believe in thyself epistle.”

Meanwhile, the Works and Housing Committee of Parliament is billed to meet officials of the Ghana Water Company Limited over its standoff with software developer, SOFTtribe.

The Committee says it may also meet with the other party[ SOFTtribe] later but wants to learn at first hand from the side of GWCL the issues that led to the termination of SOFTtribe’s contract and the subsequent raid at the offices of the Software development firm by National Security officials.

“For now, we want to meet with the Ghana Water Company to really understand what is going on. And then from there if there is a need for us to meet with SOFTtribe we will meet them as well,” Ranking Member of the Committee, Emmanuel Bedzrah stated.