John Abdulai Jinapor, the Energy Minister has revealed the illegal sale and auction of ECG-owned containers.
The Energy Minister revealed that the ECG containers at the Tema port were auctioned at ridiculously low prices.
Speaking on TV3’s The Key Point on March 29, John Jinapor revealed, “When there is an auction, and you said some of these containers belonging to ECG, which was imported with the taxpayers’ money, were auctioned at ridiculously low prices, which you have noticed now. Can such an auction of the ECG’s containers at the ports be done without the knowledge of, for instance, the managing director?”
“I thought that for such high-value items, the first step would have been that the state could have taken it, given it to the Ministry of Energy, and we’d use it for rural electrification,” Jinapor stated.
He added, “This same government spends money to buy these cables for rural electrification. And secondly, some of these items are only for one purpose. So, if you take cables, they are for the extension of electricity and nothing else,” he emphasized.
“If you go and auction them, it will end up in these aluminium factories where they will melt them at very ridiculous prices,” he revealed.
John Jinapor further stressed, “Auctions traditionally ought to be done through a competitive process, not through sole sourcing once again. An announcement ought to be made, and the government ought to give notification for everybody to participate”.
We are securing all the containers, and then we will sit with GRA, GHAPOHA, and government and have a structured payment plan.
“Instead of the Ministry of Energy now awarding another contract to buy cables, why don’t we take these cables and then apply our budget to pay for the duties and other related costs?” he recommended.
The minority leader Afenyo Markin who served as the board chairman of the ECG under the erstwhile Akufo-Addo government on the floor of parliament accused some staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) of planning and plotting with Customs Officers at the port to sell over 1,300 missing containers of cables at the Tema Port.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Friday, March 28, 2025, Afenyo-Markin questioned how the containers simply vanished into thin air despite bureaucratic processes at the port.
“How come containers at the port that have arrived, the bureaucracy at our ports, they said the containers are missing? Mr. Speaker, it is true that when these containers come, there’s some connivance with some customs officials. And they sell these containers of cables that ECG needs after the supplier has been paid.”
He further alleged that the cables are resold to ECG, urging lawmakers to focus on addressing the issue rather than politicizing it.
“They sell the containers, and people resell to ECG. Are we pretending we don’t know? Instead of us paying attention to it and killing the rot, then we come here and then NPP, NDC, maybe it happened under NPP, it happened under NDC. No.”
Afenyo-Markin assured the Energy Minister of the Minority’s support in tackling the issue.
“Hon. Energy Minister [John Jinapor], I know what you can do if we can give you support to do it. You must adopt a non-partisan posture and tackle the rot. But if we all want to approach it NPP, NDC, then Mr. Speaker, it will remain.”
