The Vice President of IMANI-Ghana has described as misleading the claim that the Electricity Company of Ghana has refused to redeem debts owed it by the US Embassy in the last two years.
Kofi Bentil said he has seen documents that showed ECG has collected bills from the US Embassy up to March, 2017.
The private legal practitioner told Samson Lardy Anyenini on Joy FM/MultiTV’s news analysis programme Newsfile Saturday, the US Embassy’s claim of being indebted to the ECG for the past two years is not true.
“I think the bigger problem is missing and we are all processing the minutiae…because since that time I have been in touch with senior management of ECG and I have been given the information that many of the [160 US Embassy] facilities are paid up to March,” he said.
Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko was first to disclose the US Embassy’s debt to the ECG during an interaction with the media and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) officials on Wednesday.
The Minister said the failure of the country’s power distributor to collect debts owed it has resulted in the situation where the company’s balance sheet is in the negative.
Hours later, the US Embassy tweeted that it has not refused to pay its debt covering 160 facilities in the country to the ECG.
“The Embassy has set aside funds for electricity, and we will continue to work with the ECG to get correct bills so we can pay,” the tweet read.
This was contradicted by the Public Utilities Workers Union (PUWU) who said the US Embassy and the Minister engaged in falsehood.
PUWU General Secretary, Michael Adumattah Nyantakyi questioned how the US Embassy paid some of its debts if it had not been receiving its bills.
But Mr Bentil, who has not shied away from lamenting about the challenges of ECG, advised the company’s management to make public all the receipts it has issued to the US Embassy.
“I am urging ECG to shut this whole argument down because it is a distraction, publish all the bills then we are done,” he charged ECG officials.