The plaintiff in the lawsuit against the Millennium Development Authority’s (MiDA) participation as an adviser in the concession arrangement for the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has said the Judge erred in throwing his case out of court.
The plaintiff, Saaka Salia, also member of the New Patriotic Party communications team was insisting that, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), not MiDA was the body mandated by law to provide guidelines for determining tariffs and levels of tariffs as prescribed by Act 538.
According to the judgement delivered by Justice Norvice Aryene on Tuesday, Mr. Salia lacked capacity in bringing the suit to court as he failed to prove how the privatisation would affect him personally.
But speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Salia maintained that his lawyers “proved beyond every reasonable doubt that I as a citizen was clothed by Article 41,” which he explained, “gives the citizen power to seek redress when things go wrong.”
He also noted that “we have other authorities, authorities that she herself quoted that actually say that similar cases should, the individual should have the capacity to go through the full hoc of the court.”
Mr. Salia also accused government of interfering in his case as he alleged that it was “doing any and everything to ensure that they circumvent the rules.”
“The substantive case itself has not been gone into the and the matter that there is forged document on the part of MiDA, on the part of IFC where they usurped the power of PURC and Energy Commission, we are yet to even go into that.”
“If we really have issues to answer, they should not be hiding under technicalities to find their way out. That is the reason why I believe that just has not been served. It is a complete subversion; it is complete mockery of justice in this case.”
Speaking to Citi BusinessNews earlier, the Chief Executive Officer of MiDA, Ing. Owura Safo described the suit as incompetent, false and lacking merit.
According to him, the allegations set in the suit were false, since MiDA has undergone all the necessary requirements and legal procedures needed to bring the Ghana Power Compact II into force.
Under the Power Compact, six projects will be implemented to address the root causes of the unavailability and unreliability of power in Ghana
The Government of Ghana signed the Ghana Power Compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent United States government agency, on the sidelines of the US Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington on August 5, 2014.
The Compact would provide Ghana with a grant sum of four hundred and ninety eight million, two hundred thousand United States Dollars.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
