Member of Parliament (MP) for Bongo, Edward Bawa has said that Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko “can no longer be trusted to protect consumers against the sale of contaminated petroleum products in the country”.
His comments follow developments in the energy sector concerning the handling and proper use of fuel.
In a statement on Thursday, November 30, the Member of Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee said it has come to his notice and indeed the notice of most Ghanaians that about 200 trucks of premix fuel meant to power fishing boats in coastal areas “have been diverted to pump stations in the country and sold to unsuspecting motorists”.
For him, the development “is very worrying, particularly as fishermen are not only denied this subsidised product, which is critical to their operations, but also the product has the potential to damage the engines of vehicles”.
He was of the view that: “more worrying is that, the chairman of the National Premix committee, who is a brother of the Minister for Fisheries (the appointing authority), is being alleged to be behind this scandal. If this is true, the Minister must, as a matter of public morality and good governance resign”.
Mr Bawa has accused Mr Agyarko of “refusing to make public, the report of the Dr Lawrence Darkua's committee that supposedly investigated yet another scandal at Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST)”.
He continued: “This was a scandal where five million litres of off spec petroleum product was sold to an unlicensed company without going through the necessary procurement processes. In essence, that process had all the marks of corruption written all over it.
“What is more disturbing is that, the Minister for Energy on November 23, 2017, in a response to a parliamentary question posed by me, told parliament that, as a measure to ensuring that off spec petroleum products do not get to our pump stations, NPA was using tracking devices on BRVs and a marking scheme to monitor the movements of all petroleum products.
“This recent development proves that the Minister was not candid with Ghanaians. This is because, as at the time the Minister was making this statement, an agency under his supervision knew that an off spec product, in the form of premix fuel, was being sold at our pump stations”.
He is therefore calling on Parliament to, as a matter of urgency, set up a bipartisan committee to investigate the latest development “as the executive led by H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has demonstrated its unwillingness to tackle the problem for reasons best known to them”.
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