A jaw-dropping allegation posted on Ghanaweb.com yesterday that I read saddened and angered me a great deal. And I am pretty sure it must have angered any other fair-minded and patriotic Ghanaian who read it too.
It is vital that the government requests Afriwave to confirm allegations its communications director, Donald Gwira, is said to have made to the effect that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), rejected an offer the company made to provide, at no cost to it, valuable revenue protection data acquired by Afriwave in monitoring traffic (domestic and international voice calls) generated by the telcos, for the National Communications Authority (NCA) - which the GRA would otherwise have to pay tens of millions of cedis annually for.
It would be intolerable and scandalous if it turned out that indeed the GRA rejected the offer from Afriwave - especially when the GRA then subsequently opted to pay out tens of millions of cedis annually for the selfsame data: in a contract it is said to have signed with a named third party during the transition period last December.
Why should cash-strapped Mother Ghana have to fork out as much as GHc74 million or thereabouts, annually, which could be used to provide off-grid electricity to power schools and hospitals across the country, each year, I ask?
Since one cannot rule out the fact that there could be a political angle to the allegations being put into the public domain by our mostly-corrupt media - one sees no direct input from either the GRA or the named third party in the Adom News/Robert Dowuona story posted on Ghanaweb.com - to be fair to both the GRA and the named third party, it is crucial that they both quickly publicly rebut Afriwave's claims, if they indeed are baseless: for the allegations against the GRA are very serious - given the current political climate in the country.
Ghanaians now want all those who deliberately cause financial loss to their country to be tried in the law courts and jailed. That is why if indeed the allegations against the GRA are true, then this outrage must definitely not be allowed to continue - by a government that says it intends to protect the public purse througout its four-year tenure. It ought to head for the law courts if that is a possible option after investigations into the matter are completed.
Clearly, it is a moot point as to whether or not the legal basis for the agreement the GRA signed with the named third party during the transition period is sound: because apparently neither the Attorney General nor Parliament sanctioned it.
The startling revelation by Afriwave's communications director, Donald Gwira, illustrates perfectly, the egregious perfidy of our greed-filled vampire-elites - who are brutally gang-raping Mother Ghana.
Hmm, Oman Ghana - enti yewieye paa enei? Asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
For the benefit of this blog's many readers, today, we have culled and published below, that Ghanaweb.com story on the allegation by Afriwave against the GRA that was posted yesterday on the business news webpage of that Ghana-focused website and attributed to a Robert Dowuona - who apparently reports for Adom FM although I stand to be corrected on that.
Please read on:
''Communications Director of Afriwave Telecoms Ghana Limited, Donald Gwira has debunked
allegations that the company is being paid by the National Communications Authority
(NCA) for a job meant for the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to do.
A local newspaper reported recently that NCA has paid Afriwave some GHC4.5million for
revenue assurance for the NCA, saying that the payment was not justified because, by
law, revenue assurance was under the purview of GRA and not NCA.
But Donald Gwira told Adom News the new Electronic Communication (Amendment) Act, Act
910, 2016, which authorizes the operations of the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH)
clearly stated the ICH (Afriwave) cannot do tax revenue assurance for GRA, which is
different from the revenue assurance as per its license it is doing currently doing
for NCA.
According to him, by law, NCA is supposed to charge telcos a number of fees based on
the volume of traffic they generate, and those charges by the NCA, had in the past
been based on records generated by the telcos themselves.
Gwira said the NCA therefore contracted Afriwave to independently generate those
records for them to be able to issue invoices to each telco based on independently
generated records.
"That is the kind of revenue assurance we are doing for the NCA as opposed to tax
revenue assurance which the law (Act 910) bars the ICH (Afriwave) from doing," he
said.
He explained that the ICH is set up to automatically monitor traffic flow on telcos
international gateways and on the interconnect platform in real time, and that data
can be used by the NCA for revenue assurance on those platforms.
GRA reject Afriwave's free service
Gwira also noted that the work of Afriwave automatically generates free data for GRA
to be able to determine domestic tax revenue from the telcos but GRA chose to still
award a contract to another company, and pay for the service.
Afriwave wrote a letter dated May 3, 2016 to GRA, offering to give them free data for
them to do domestic tax revenue assurance on the telcos activities.
That offer meant GRA did not need to pay for tax revenue assurance on the activities
of telcos, but GRA chose to renew the contract of another company (Subah) just for
the state to keep paying for something Afriwave is offering for free.
Adom News is reliably informed that GRA renewed the Subah contract without recourse
to the Attorney-General.
It would also be recalled that the same GRA allegedly inserted a termination clause
in a contract with same Subah on the blind side of the A-G, which meant if Subah's
contract was terminated, the state was going to pay huge moneys to Subah.
Meanwhile, a few years back, Subah and GRA were in the news for some GHC74million the
latter paid to the former allegedly for no work done. Till date, GRA has not been
able to explain to the public how Subah earned money from the state when there is no
record of Subah having done the work for which it was paid.
On the contrary, NCA made it clear from day one that until 2018, it will pay Afriwave
for NCA's revenue assurance, for anti-Simboxing and for the actual interconnect
management. That information has not been hidden from the public, and the law, as it
stands, is not opposed to any of those arrangements.
Telcos still argue that the work of ICH will burden consumers with extra charge, but
the NCA has explained over and again that it will bear all interconnect cost till
2018, when the interconnect rate will be due for review and Afriwave will naturally
make its earning without any undue cost burden on consumers.
Meanwhile, just when the law was passed for ICH to start operation, NCA announced
that a cushion the public from any cost burden until the said date.''
End of culled story posted on Ghanaweb.com by Robert Dowuona.
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