Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central Constituency, Isaac Adongo, is accusing the Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo of signing a valueless contract in the wake of the UNI-PASS saga.
According to him, the controversy surrounding the implementation of the UNI-PASS system deal has created a mess at the country’s ports adding, the Senior Minister “through his ulterior motives has opted for a destructive activity”.
The Member of Parliament’s Finance Committee in an interview on Thursday, 30 April 2020 said; “To make things worse, the Senior Minister has suddenly taken over the work of the Vice President, Dr Bawumia and everybody knows that the paperless system is the idea of the Vice President and discussions that culminated in the paperless systems by integrating the existing single window were championed by him.”
“Why is it that at the time the Vice President was coming to take over this paperless system, he didn’t do an assessment to arrive at the conclusion that the system was ineffective and needed to be replaced?,” Mr Adongo quizzed.
“Hon. Osafo-Maafo I now understand why you were removed as the Finance Minister to Education because if you were sitting there as the Finance Minister today, I imagine many of these of valueless transactions happening,” he indicated.
Mr Adongo noted “the Senior Minister along with persons being interested in their own personal gain are benefitting from a destructive activity” adding, Ghanaian citizens cannot watch on whilst the controversy persists.
“In any case as a country, we’re supposed to uphold the sanctity of contracts and it is our responsibility to assure the international investor community that when put your money in Ghana, you will get your return,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, UNI-PASS was introduced by government to replace the single window platform– Ghana Customs Management System (GCMS)– from GCNet and West Blue Consult, at the country ports.
Following that, many Freight Forwarders at the ports have been agitated over their inability to pass declaration to get their goods out of the port following the implementation of the UNI-PASS system.
The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) started implementing the UNI-PASS system on Tuesday, April 28, 2020 but has since now been restored back to GCNet amidst challenges with the UNI-PASS system.
