IMANI Africa has petitioned Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to facilitate the abrogation of a newly signed $86.4 million contract between the state and a telecommunications company, GVG/Kelni.

GVG/Kelni, a Haitian originated company, has been 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.

Subah Info Solution and Afriwave are already performing the function for the Telecommunications ministry.

Already, the contract upon signing stipulates that a payment of $1,491,225 be paid monthly for a 5-year period, amounting to a total of USD 89,473,500.

Per the terms of the contract, which was signed in December 2017, the monthly payments are supposed to begin no later than 30 days after the contract was signed.

This, by inference, means that the state through the Ministry of Communications owes at least $5.96 million as of May this year.

Speaking on Morning Starr, the founding President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe said the GVG/Kenlni contract is needless and a duplication of functions.

“What is perplexing from a policy and strategy point of view is the rationale behind signing a new contract when there is no clarity as to the statuses of the mandate of the previous contractors operating in this revenue assurance space,” he stated in an earlier statement.

He added: “There has not been any defined and clear performance parameters set for the contracts related to Subah and later Afriwave, and it is therefore very difficult to decipher whether their services provide value for money.

“Indeed, there has been no such report of underperformance by the stakeholders that contracted Subah. The issue then is, why did the Ministry of Communications go ahead and sign a new contract under the name of a common monitoring platform for a service that is already being rendered under an existing contract by a fellow government agency?”