UNIPASS Fiasco: You’ll account for every penny - Adongo to Senior Minister

Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central Isaac Adongo has cautioned the Senior Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo over the troubled UNIPASS deal.

Freight forwarders have been unable to clear or ship cargo since the beginning of the week over failure of Unipass to successfully deploy its system to replace the existing one operated by GCNET and West Blue.

The GRA has had to write to GCNET to intervene in addressing the situation.

Addressing the media in parliament on Thursday,April, 30,2020, Mr. Adongo laid the blame on the senior minister who supervised the deal with the Korean company as the country parts ways with GCNET and West Blue.

According to the Minority Spokesperson on finance, the new deal does not make financial sense given how expensive it is, relative to the existing system.

Adongo further cautioned that the failure of Unipass to successfully deploy its system for clearance of cargo will bring about shortage of essentials in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He added Osafo Maafo will be made to account for the deal by a future NDC administration.

“I want to serve a big warning to the Senior Minister, that the day of reckoning is coming, and in 2021, when His Excellency John Dramani Mahama takes office, he’ll account for every financial loss he’s caused the state by virtue of pursuing this ugly transaction for the people of Ghana.”

Mr Adongo listed plethora of faults with the new deal, saying “to introduce a new system, there are basic rules and protocols that one needs to follow. The first rule is that you need to test-run that system and so at this point in time government would have had the opportunity to be given a test-run of the Unipass system .that has not happened.”



He went on “We cannot allow somebody who belongs to a generation that is already gone to sacrifice the future of the next generation. I want to take this challenge to the senior minister that he cannot be looking for his pension from the resources of the people of Ghana. He must deliver what is value-driven for our people. He must not spend a penny of the people of Ghana to buy up a contract that is not superior and better than the existing contract and he must not pose additional risk to the business community at the port who have already suffered enough because they can’t even import the goods into the country”.”

“Why the indecent haste to replace a working system, a system that has been proven to be one of the best in the world. A system that is ISO certified, with a system that has no knowledge about and a system that is not tried and tested,” he quizzed.