Government Told to Suspend Contract with OMCs Over Premix Diversions

The Akufo-Addo government has been advised to immediately suspend its contract with the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) in charge of transporting pre-mix fuel to the various landing beaches across the country.

The Co-convener of the Civil Society Alliance on Fisheries, Richster Nii Amarfio, who made the call on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday, said the state oil company, GOIL, could be directed to take charge of distributing the product, while government puts measures in place to investigate the current scandal in the sector which has come as a result of diversion of pre-mix fuel.

“I think that what we should be doing now is to suspend all the OMCs and allow GOIL, which is the state oil company to be doing the lifting until we have dealt with all the problem,” he said.

Reports from the NPA suggest that, diversion of pre-mix fuel has been rife in the sector since January 2017, with over 200 of such cases so far recorded.

Citi News sighted several letters the NPA wrote to the National Premix Committee and the stakeholders involved, complaining about the diversions of the product meant for landing beaches, but never reached its intended destination.

Despite this action, the NPA has not been able to take any drastic action in stopping the corrupt activity.

It has been estimated that, the country lost over GHc7 million in subsidies due to the illegality.

Ever since the exposé, there have been numerous calls on the NPA to prosecute the perpetrators, but the Authority is yet to make an official determination on the matter.

Nii Amarfio in the interview also charged the presidency “to step in and probably dissolve the National Pre-mix Committee, and put in place interim measures, and launch full scale investigation into what is happening, why the Ministry and the Pre-mix committee are not responding to any of the letters from the NPA so that Ghanaians are clear on what is happening to their taxes.”

“I think this will be in line with the president’s resolve to fight the acts of corruption. I think the presidency should step in. I also expect the IGP to also go into full scale investigation because the President has said he will let every allegation of corruption to be fully investigated. So the IGP should go in and investigate so that we can identify each driver and truck that is on the list of trucks alleged to have perpetrated these acts,” he added.