No fraud in award of Afriwave contract — NCA

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has refuted allegations by a local think tank, IMANI Ghana, that the authority fraudulently skewed the process to favour Afriwave Telecoms in the award of a licence for an Interconnect Clearing House (ICH).

In a report released this week, IMANI Ghana said the NCA accepted and evaluated bids for the licence to operate a clearing house for the telecommunications industry from five companies and chose to give the licence to Afriwave although there were more competent companies to execute the contract.

It, therefore, appealed to President John Mahama and the Minister of Communications to take steps to “redeem the credibility of the whole process”.

Rebuff

However, at a press briefing in Accra on Thursday, the Director-General of the NCA, Mr William Tevie, stated that there was no fraud or rigging in the selection process for the ICH licence.

“NCA has always operated in a way to protect the integrity of its operations and we have been in this space for the past 20 years and have worked in the interest of the country,” he said.

Mr Tevie, therefore, described IMANI’s assertion as regrettable and misleading.

Selection process

Flanked by top officials of the NCA and members of the Application Evaluation Panel (AEP), Mr Tevie said the selection of the final winner of the award was done in a transparent manner and challenged anyone with concerns to call at the NCA.

“The application documents submitted by each applicant are available. The video recordings of the oral presentation made by the applicants to the AEP and their responses to the questions posed by the AEP are also available.

“As far as the final report is concerned, the NCA firmly states that due diligence was employed throughout this process,” he told the fully packed pressroom at the International Press Centre.

Explaining the process, Mr Tevie said on December 2, 2014, the NCA received five applications for a clearing house licence from Afriwave Telecom Ghana Limited, Channel IT, Global Voice Group, Prodigy Ghana Limited and Subah Infosolutions Ghana Limited.

“Each of the five applicants was given the opportunity to make submissions on their bids on January 12, 2015 and answer some queries as well.”

He said after a comprehensive and transparent evaluation of the bids of the five applicants on January 23, 2015, the NCA board duly adjudged Afriwave Ghana Limited as the winner of the clearing house licence.

He cautioned that suspicion and speculation without valid evidence should be avoided to prevent creating distrust for the activities of state institutions.

Transfer of scores

On the award of points in the various areas of the licence application evaluation process, Mr Tevie said the NCA had, in an earlier response, indicated that in the preparation of the report, the AEP transferred the scores from Excel to Microsoft Word.

He explained that it was then detected that there were some errors with regard to the scores, “in which situation the errors were corrected and there are verifiable correspondences to that effect”.

He said after the corrections, the total scores remained the same, with Afriwave having obtained the most points, stressing that the correction had no impact on the outcome of the evaluation.

Points awarded

Touching on what informed the points awarded in the different areas, “we wish to state that the AEP explained all the metrics used in assessing each aspect of the applications in their report”.

Mr Tevie said with respect to access to financing, the AEP sought to ascertain the extent to which an applicant could raise equity and/or debt to pay for the cost of deploying and maintaining the infrastructure required for the project.

He added that the panel also took into consideration the experience and track record of the company and its management to raise funds from both equity and debt to fund the roll-out.