IMANI and Amewu reprimanded for Aker Energy's "fight"

Company News of Saturday, April 27, 2019

Source: 3news.com

2019-04-27

The political think tank IMANI-Africa and the Minister of Energy received their fair share of criticism of the new oil deal signed between the government and the Norwegian oil company Aker Energy.

The two men quarreled over the agreement with the policy think tank, saying Ghana could lose $ 30 billion if the government does not reconsider the contractual agreement.

Industry Minister John-Peter Amewu on Friday dismissed the think tank's claims as "utter falsity".

He stated that IMANi-Africa should have done due diligence before meeting the press.

Kwame Jantuah, representative of the Ghana Industries Association for Oil and Gas, said he was disappointed that members of civil society had no concrete evidence of these accusations.

A jurist, Mr. Jantuah, stated that the courts did not intervene in the hearings to render judgments.

According to him, most of the allegations made by IMANI-Africa were those they gleaned from the workers and not irrefutable facts to facilitate court challenges.

Another energy expert, Kojo Poku, who was also part of the program, reprimanded the energy minister for his reaction to the charges.

According to Poku, government agencies need civil society to improve their work. The total rejection of the requests by Mr. Amewu is therefore regrettable.

He therefore called for stronger collaboration between government agencies and civil society, both of whom need one another in the work.

Meanwhile, the founding president of IMANI-Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has criticized the seemingly arbitrary powers of the country, which are conferred on ministers of state.

For him, the powers must be vested in other actors of the work system.

"We must not give our ministers discretionary powers because the engineers have confirmed [our claims]He said by phone.