General News of Saturday, 26 May 2018

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

Franklin Cudjoe receives threats over controversial Kelni GVG deal

Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI President Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI President

President and Founder of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe has started to receive threats over his utterances concerning the controversial Kelni GVG deal.

According to Franklin Cudjoe, a highly placed source from the Ministry of Interior cautioned him about the danger about to befall him if he continues to fuel debates on the $89 million deal between the government and the ICT firm.

His source from the ministry told him to be on guard always and be careful of his surroundings and movements as his life is in danger.

Kelni GVG, a Haitian originated company, was awarded a contract by the government for design, development and implementation of a common platform for traffic monitoring, revenue assurance, and mobile money monitoring and fraud management, a service already being rendered by Afriwave and Subah Info Solution.

IMANI has questioned the rationale behind the new contract with Kelni GVG, describing it as wasteful and aimed at milking the public purse. According to the policy think tank group, reasons espoused by government officials to back the deal lack financial sense except that it was premised on political thinking.

Franklin Cudjoe holds the position that the deal is needless, adding that with the current tax returns filed by the telcos which is in excess of a billion Ghana cedis each year, government would make close to 7.5 billion cedis within the same space of time.

But the Deputy Communications Minister George Andah says the campaign being waged by policy think tank IMANI on the controversial KelniGVG contract is premised on misinformation or better still he is convinced IMANI is doing the bidding of its paymasters who see the contract as a threat to them.

Challenging the claims by policy think tank that KelniGVG is not fit to provide the services for which they have been contracted, Andah said “IMANI is not God,” suggesting the information IMANI is putting out is not sacrosanct.

Speaking on Joy FM’s news analysis program Newsfile, Saturday, the Deputy Minister said the government followed due process of law in contracting the company to provide four services, including revenue monitoring assurance, fraud and monitoring of mobile money operations.

In a Facebook post, Franklin Cudjoe says following the threats he has received, he will now step up his resistance against the $89 million contentious deal between the government and Haiti-based ICT firm, Kelni GVG and is, therefore, urging all and sundry to join in the fight against the controversial deal.

"What am gathering concerning your utterances on the [GVG] matter is not palatable. Just be on your guard and watch your movements and surroundings."

“Just came in from a highly placed source from the Ministry of Interior.
Well, well, well. We are by this notice going international then and put all our friends local and international on notice. The matter continues unabated”, he wrote in his post.