The Ministry of Communication is coming under fire for what appears to be a controversial award of a contract to the company, Afriwave for the Interconnect Clearing House (ICH).
The ICH is expected to become a platform through which all calls in Ghana will be routed
The contract is expected to generate at least I billion United Sates Dollars over the next 10 years for Afriwave.
The suspicion of underhand dealings is grounded by the fact that a closer look at the scores awarded all the competing companies in three main categories indicate that Afriwave scored more marks than the maximum awarded marks.
The report itself mentioned on page 32 that the financial position of the company was not strong and that their finances were actually negative.
How a company whose finances were described as negative by the evaluation panel became eventually winner is quite curious.
Policy think tank IMANI Ghana has actually raised several red flags over the report and has asked for probe.
According to the think tank, “the panel manipulated its own scoring scheme to ensure that Afriwave came on top, regardless of the actual results and they did so with brazenness that is almost farcical”.
“With a score of 0 on equity, how did Afriwave score more than 75% of the points available on debt equity ratio? Why was the final report of the committee not vetted by the NCA for accuracy and consistency of the computations and conclusions arrived at? IMANI queried.
Meanwhile the NCA has issued a response to IMANI in which they described the contradictions in the marks as mere transposition errors, an explanation largely rejected by many concerned Ghanaians.
The National Communication Authority is expected to publish the corrected report this week in an attempt to clear all doubts.
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