Ursula Owusu-Ekuful
The Minister-designate for Communication and Digitisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has disclosed that the COVID-19 Tracker App that was developed to help the country carry out contact-tracing did not cost the government a pesewa.
She said some individuals, on their own volition, volunteered to develop the app for the country, intimating that several countries, at the onset of the pandemic, tried to use technology to assist in conducting contact-tracing.
Speaking at the public hearing of the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful stated that the tracker app was intended for people to self-report and enable the health authorities to handle the COVID-19 situation.
“Certain public-spirited individuals extended all kinds of support to the government, and some companies also offered to put their expertise at the disposal of the government, which we gladly accepted, resulting in the creation of the tracker app. The app didn’t cost the government a pesewa. We did not pay anything for the app,” she stressed.
KelniGVG Deal
On the issue of the management of the common platform for mobile money, Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful indicated that there were arrangements for knowledge and technology transfer for the National Communications Authority (NCA) to take over the platform, pointing out that there are no timelines yet on when the NCA will do that.
She said the management of the common platform for traffic and mobile money monitoring was currently being overseen by KelniGVG and added that it was her expectation that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) would have a hand in the management of the common platform.
“The NCA and GRA are ultimately expected to manage the platform for their own regulatory purposes and to assist them to also perform their obligations under the [Communication Service Tax] Act,” she noted.
“The NCA will have to inform me that they are sufficiently capable of undertaking this task and when they do, the process is seamless and is handed over to them. I cannot indicate which period they will be comfortable to take over,” Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful said.
Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful defended the integrity of the deal with the KelniGVG and said that “procurement laws were followed to the letter,” while parrying away criticism couched by a member of the committee that some people had alleged corruption and underhand dealings in the award of the revenue assurance monitoring contract to KelniGVG.
The minister-designate asserted that it had resulted in cost savings of $1.1 million monthly as against the previous situation, arguing that the KelniGVG deal had provided “less cost and more value”, aside offering the country improved real-time monitoring of 2.5 billion transactions per day within the telecoms sector, comprising calls, SMS activities and mobile money transactions.
By Ernest Kofi Adu