He said all persons found culpable in the missing containers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) would be punished to serve as a deterrent to public officers.
Mr Jinapor gave the assurance on Tuesday when a five-member committee presented its investigative report on the cause of over 2,500 uncleared containers procured by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and left at the port.
Led by Professor Innocent Senyo Akwasi, a Procurement and supply chain management expert, the committee was tasked to investigate in general, ECG’s procurement practices, cost of the containers and liabilities involved and recommendations about the containers, which have led to financial liabilities estimated at GH¢1.5 billion.
Mr Jinapor said, “…1,328 containers cannot just vanish into thin air, somebody must be held liable for this. I assure you that we will hold people accountable for this and that is the essence of public office.”
He said the report would be forwarded to the law enforcement agencies and ensure that the containers or the monetary equivalent of contents of those containers would be retrieved.
“…And that I assure you that this ministry would pursue this to its logical conclusion. We have decided that we would move the rest of the containers into a secured warehouse,” he said.
He commended the committee and all agencies involved in the preliminary investigations for the detailed work.
Mr Jinapor stated that the ECG was critical to the country’s socio-economic and political development, “If we don’t get ECG fixed, we’ll continue to have serious challenges which will impact power delivery and even the delivery of petroleum products”.
The government in the coming days, he said, would take tough, unpleasant, difficult decisions in the overall interest of the country.
“We must fix the system. Other than that, the whole energy sector will collapse one day,” he said.
Prof. Akwasi said aside from the 1,328 containers unaccounted for, the investigations revealed issues of procurement breaches and over procurement in the year 2022 and 2023.
“Over-procurement simply means procuring more than what you planned for. So, for example, in 2022, over-procurement was about 70 per cent, in 2023, it was about 740 per cent,” he said.
Prof. Akwesi explained that in every structured institution procurement plan ought to be developed and approved by the board, noting that, “…this was not followed by ECG.”
The committee recommended that the procurement section of ECG be decoupled from the estate department and competent personnel hired to man the office.
GNA
