SOFTtribe Contract Termination In National Interest – GWCL

The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has said that its decision to terminate its contract with local IT firm, SOFTtribe Limited was in the national interest.

According to GWCL, the termination was long overdue due to the many challenges SOFTtribe’s e-billing system was fraught with.

GWCL and SOFTtribe Limited have recently been in a tussle over the termination of the IT Firm’s contract with the water company.

While SOFTtribe believes that the decision to terminate the contract was unfair, Ghana Water Company Limited insists that it was necessary.

The Managing Director of GWCL, Dr. Clifford Braimah at a press conference said SOFTtribe had failed to address the many challenges with its software that was negatively affecting GWCL’s business.

He said that a forensic audit found SOFTtribe incapable of handling the billing system, and recommended that urgent actions should be taken.

Mr. Braimah added that GWCL lost millions in revenue due to incidence like billing with wrong tariff and disparities between water bills.

“It was established that GWCL’s e-billing system was fraught with a lot of disparities and complaints from customers, staff and the early users of the software. There are a lot of people who say they didn’t consume that much but were given so much bill. When customers begin to complain about the measurement of their consumption and they are not satisfied, demand is going to slow down, willingness to pay is also going to slow down. It was established that the e-billing solution had some undefined scope and that it was still under development,”  Dr. Clifford Braimah said.

“GWCL will have to evaluate the risk and take a decisive decision before customers begin agitating over inaccurate bills and to also prevent some personnel of the company to take advantage of the situation to cash in… Nobody can say that GWCL is anti-Ghanaian business. It is not. The fact is that, the interest of me as a Managing Director is to protect the citizens of Ghana and if I am to protect the citizens of Ghana, I will use every legitimate means to do that,” he added.

SOFTtribe’s offices raided

Some operatives of National Security raided the offices of SOFTtribe Limited on Monday, reportedly to secure the database of the Ghana Water Company Limited.

The operation reportedly followed a complaint by the water company that the IT firm was deliberately preventing them from accessing the database.

According to sources at the National Security, SOFTtribe Limited was holding the databases, which are critical for billing customers, to ransom after GWCL served notice that it will not renew its contractual relations with the IT firm.

Meanwhile, the IT firm believes that the decision to terminate its contract is wrong.