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Workers of the Volta River Authority (VRA) have expressed disappointment at the management style of the their chief Executive and the MD of the Volta hotel, accusing them of causing financial loss to the facility as regards their decision to spend a whooping sum of GHC3.5 Million cedis on building a river boat that has not functioned properly since its construction.

The source told the New Crusading Guide that two top managers of the hotel, Kirk Koffi and Fred Bart-Plange, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director respectively, are the people behind the deal which has caused the nation a fortune at a time that Ghanaians find themselves in a very serious financial and power crisis.

The workers have therefore called on the president, John Dramani Mahama to initiate investigations into the matter.

According to the workers, the whole deal started when management of the hotel decided to construct a new boat to replace the Dodi Princess 1, which got burnt sometime back through some mysterious circumstances.

The Turkish company, Onur Makina that was contracted to build the new boat for the company, according to the source did a shoddy job by building an inferior boat which cannot even travel more than 300metres.

The newly built boat which had since been abandoned and rusting can only carry 175 passengers as compared to the Dodi Princess 1 which could carry over 500 people.

The source disclosed further that, the contract which was expected to take up to seven months to complete had to be dragged for three years since some people were benefiting illegally from it.

The workers have indicated that their disappointment stem from the fact that the internal marine department of the VRA which built the Dodi Princess could have built the Dodi Princess 11 at a lesser cost but because of “some selfish gains” Kirk and Fred decided to award the contract to the Turks.

“The insurance policies for every contract awarded by the Volta Hotel are handled by the State Insurance Company Limited since time immemorial as it is owned by the Ghanaian tax payer but in this case, it was awarded to MET Insurance Company for reasons best known to only Kirk and Fred,” the source stated.

Moreover, the New Crusading Guide was informed that the agreement between the Turkish Company has been kept away from the workers of the company and shrouded in secrecy.

Buttressing his point, the source provided this paper with documents to prove that Fred Bart-Plange, the MD for the hotel, in one way or the other benefitted from signing the insurance contract with MET Insurance instead of SIC.

The New Crusading Guide learnt that, the Turkish are very angry with management of the facility for bringing a Ghanaian company, Bemmarine Services to check the boat and access whether it met international requirements, and paid the company an amount of GHc 3,446,086.46.

“As a result of this arrangement by the two managers, the Turks have refused to come to the country to commission the newly built boat,” our source stated, alleging that the Dodi Princess 1 might have been deliberately burnt in order to allow some people at the hotel to have their way and spend millions of the taxpayers money on a new boat which was going to inure to their personal benefit.

When contacted, the Chief executive of the Volta River Authority Kirk Koffi said he could not comment on the issue since he wasn’t at post when the contract for the construction of the agreement was signed and that Fred Bart-Plange, the Managing Director of the Volta Hotel has all the information to react to it.

When contacted Fred Bart-Plange said the contract sum of the construction of the Dodi Princess II (two) between VRA and Onur Makina was US$1.26 million, confirming the 3.5 million cedis cost stated earlier.

However, he debunked assertion that the contract did not go through procurement. He said “it was the VRA Board that awarded the contract under one Kweku Awotwe not Kirk Koffie.” 

Explaining how VRA brought in Bemmarine, he said, the International Maritime Organization brought a rule that all passenger carrying boats must be built out of class.

“So we picked Bemmarine, a local class surveyor to supervise the construction of the boat and we have the International Naval Survey Bureau that is also providing international class consultancy under the recommendation of the Ghana Maritime Authority.  We have only paid US$55,000 dollars to Bemmarine to certify the boat.” He explained

 He confirmed that the Dodi II is 95 per cent complete but the contractor has not handed over the boat to VRA due to some misunderstandings. “We couldn’t use it because at the time we planned inaugurating it the water level was low and that prevented the boat from operating. For seven months we couldn’t move the boat because of the low water level.”

He said as a result of that the difficulties, Onur Makina, the contractor has left the country and is demanding a huge compensation before he returns to complete the job.  Since we are not ready to pay them any compensation we are thinking of terminating the contract with them.

He confirmed that initially when the engine of the boat was first ignited it heated up and developed some faults making it difficult to operate but said all the faults have been rectified.

Asked why the  contract was not given to the Marine Department of the VRA , that’s  the Volta Marine and Transport section to build the boat like the way the Dodi Princess was built, he said  the department does not have the expertise and the capacity   to build such a boat, hence the decision to bring in the Turks.

He noted that he is ready to defend his expenses anywhere even at the Public Accounts committee since he believes the right thing has been done with regard to the constriction of the boat.