The Minority Caucus in Parliament has served notice to the government it will trigger appropriate rules and processes for a full-scale parliamentary inquiry into the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), which has resulted in financial loss to the company.
It noted with disgust the unexplained disappearance of 105,927 litres of gas oil, wrongful loading of 252,000 litres of aviation turbine kerosene, disappearance of 18 drums of electrical cables, Liquefied Petroleum Gas and loss of Naphtha.
The Minority disclosed that estimated cost of stolen items was in excess of GHC42 million excluding the value of Naphtha.
In a statement signed and issued by Abdulai Jinapor, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Yapei Kusawgu in the Savannah Region and Ranking Member for Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament saidit was an unfortunate development comes on the heels of several corruption scandals that had characterised the government particularly, in the energy sector noted for thievery and flagrant disregard for due processes.
It said it was untenable to hear of such huge losses without any tangible explanation which raises issues of dereliction of duty on the part of management of the Company which required parliamentary inquiry.
“Since 2017, TOR has been mismanaged into a state of comatose, with its attendant appointment of four different Chief Executive Officers and it is becoming obvious the refinery is gradually moving into a state of total collapse and reason why current government has proposed to turn it into a tank farm.
“The National Democratic Congress (NDC) government bequeathed crude oil worth $2million including the TEN crude to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government when we were leaving office in January 2017 to help finance its operations,” the statement said.
It said despite interventions, the company incurred loss of $24 million after processing 950,000 barrels of crude which were enough to plunge it into further debt, leading to forced shutdown of the Crude Distillation Unit on November 30, 2018, due to poor management and political interferences.
“We wish to serve notice Minority will not sit unconcerned for the government to plunge the only oil refinery in the country into comatose, we are well aware of cover-up in Bulk Oil Storage Transport scandal and cannot trust the government to conduct fair, transparent and unbiased investigation,” the statement said.–classfmonline.com