Vice-president IMANI Africa, Bright Simons has quizzed the John Mahama government if the $12million paid to PowerChina for Pwalugu Dam is gone forever.
His comments come after Agric Minister Eric Opoku revealed the Pwalugu Dam contract is set to be terminated.
According to Bright Simons, the contractor on the project has already departed the site many months ago.
He revealed that the contractor has sold project materials and “de-mobilised” the agreement has thus already been constructively terminated.
Bright Simon wrote on X, “ Termination is hardly the big issue here. What we want you to tell us are as follows: Do you intend to call upon the guarantee issued by Stanbic Bank based on which the advanced payment to PowerChina was made? Has the government discharged its obligations in a manner that should allow it to call on the guarantee? If not, is the ~$12 million paid to PowerChina gone forever?”.
“Will the project scope be reviewed? No serious financier is going to give Ghana nearly $500 million to build a dam, whose primary commercialisation strategy is a 60 MW hydro dam with a 50 MW solar plant latched on as an afterthought”, he further wrote.
Part of his statement further reads, “But as I have explained above, it is a far more complex issue. Full transparency would help clarify how the country will save or recover money. It won’t be as simple as just “retrieving” what was paid. Most ORAL situations look like this.
Citizens who support ORAL must therefore learn to be interested in detail and push the new government to ditch the opaque model we have become accustomed to and embrace a new era of openness and analysis”.
Bright Simons further noted that for any real change to come, Ghanaians especially those in the middle classes, must stop being satisfied with headline announcements and surface measures.
See his post below:
Here is my prayer:
That a time will come when the middle-classes won’t allow a Minister to get away with “broad generalities” in Ghana.
When he says, Ghana will terminate the Pwalugu Dam contract, we would ask the following:
1. PowerChina, the contractor on the project, has… pic.twitter.com/efT145QzmV
— Bright Simons (@BBSimons) February 2, 2025
