Carlos Ahenkorah’s Long Hangover

Should there have been any Clause in the 1992 Fourth Republican Constitution that forbids public officials from commenting on any topical, national issue, one individual, who might easily be captured in the ‘gagging net’, is Kingsley Carlos Ahenkorah, Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry.

This is because many of his political actions and utterances, since his appointment, have been recorded on the negative side of history; and are very often embarrassing to the President, Parliament and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

From his verbal attacks at a fellow Member of Parliament over the ‘Seat-For-Cash saga, to his near-fisticuffs with officials of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) because of a demolition exercise in his constituency, all of which were captured on tape, one would have thought that the Tema West Constituency lawmaker would have, if for nothing at all, known which turfs are too slippery to step. But that is not the case.

This time around, Mr. Ahenkorah is on record for, not fighting and threatening technocrats nor insulting a fellow MP but spewing naked lies about facts and figures regarding ongoing issues at the Tema Port.

The deputy Trade Minister, in a recent interview with TV3, said Customs World Dubai (West Blue Consultancy) and GCNet are being booted out of the port in Tema for collectively charging a whopping 1.4% on every declaration that passes through their system, hence the Ministry’s decision to replace the two companies with UNIPASS, which he claimed, is ready to do ‘both jobs’ for a paltry 0.75%.

THE PUBLISHER is of the view that Mr. Ahenkorah was not truthful with the people of Ghana in that interview and wonders why the deputy Minister would so blatantly distort the facts the way he did.

The facts, as we have it, is that West Blue Consulting with its overseas partner, Customs World Dubai currently earn only 0.28%, which is less than half of UNIPASS’ 0.75%.

So, with GCNet’s 0.4% earning, we are talking mathematically of 0.68% for the two vendors. Only heaven knows where Mr. Ahenkorah’s 1.4% figure was ‘callously’ conjured from.

The paper also wonders why, in his infamous permutation, the deputy Minister failed to factor Ghana Link’s (the local company that brought UNIPASS) 0.3% scanning fee to UNIPASS’ 0.75% so the world would know that Ghana would actually be losing 1.05% of port revenue under the new system he is proposing.

These are simple facts he could have cross-checked from the Ministry of Finance before rushing to the media.

If it were in Europe or America, moral conscience would not have allowed Kingsley Carlos Ahenkorah to remain at post one hour after he had lied so palpably to Ghanaians.

The paper, hereby, advises the Tema West MP that doing due diligence to any information pays much more than dashing to TV stations in search of media relevance.

He should, better still, subject himself to a self-imposed ban on ‘noise-making’, to save his good self, party, Parliament and the President any further embarrassment.