President John Mahama
Pro NPP Young Patriots group thinks President John Mahama should be blamed for the Tema Oil Refinery’s malfunction.The group maintains that President Mahama cannot isolate himself from the current managerial deficiency that has hit the nation’s oil producing body.
Chairman for the Young Patriots, Richard Nyamah raised this in statement copied to Citi News stating, “President Mahama over the last week has been shedding crocodile tears on the deepening energy crisis facing Ghana but Young Patriots can state without any fear of contradiction that the President is part of the problem and has contributed to our poor energy supply needs. Any show of concern therefore is to pull the wool over our eyes.”
The group is convinced that the current Mahama led NDC government lacks the political goodwill to fix the numerous problems that have rendered TOR useless.
“President Mahama over the past 2-3 years as then Vice President had a series of meetings and negotiations with Union leaders of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) in an attempt to know the true state of affairs of TOR and how to resolve the issue; however, he failed to put in place any pragmatic measures to help ameliorate our suffering when it was made clear to him that unless the oil mafia within his government is prevented from taking advantage of Ghana, the albatross will continue to hang on our necks.”
The Young Patriots asserted that the government has outsourced the importation of finished petroleum products to private oil distribution companies owned by NDC cronies such as Vihama oil, Strategic oil, Eco Petroleum, Fuel trade and Shelico for which reason TOR has been liquidated.
“The major role the oil cabal within the government has played through the importation of finished petroleum products in place of TOR cannot be wished away; the President and the NDC need to explain the persons behind the some of the above companies have turned the storage facilities of TOR into their private properties and storing their personal finished products and making profits at the detriment of the state.”
The group insisted that Ghanaians deserved to know the true state of TOR. “Our concern as a group is that the President has the full facts and has either failed or refused to do anything about this matter.”
The Young Patriots did not spare the National Petroleum Authority Boss, Mr. Alex Mould.
“We are also aware that the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) and Mr. Alex Mould in particular has questions to answer as to why the NPA has on several occasions instructed TOR to shut down when it had no faults and no reasons to do so.”
The group recalled, “TOR as we are currently speaking has operated for less than two years in the last four years and has been shut down for the last 9months with all workers still on full pay and allowances at the expense of the taxpayer; we do not understand why TOR over the past two years has not been paid any monies from the TOR recovery levy which still being collected.”
“It is mind boggling that a company which has not been operating for the better part of four years has still got a debt of over $300m for subsidizing a product that it has not produced,”the Young Patriots fumed.
By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/Citifmonline.com/Ghana
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