An Indian Railway Construction Company, AFCONS, is in a dogfight with its Ghanaian counterpart, M&E Global Security Ghana,over the manner in which the former is allegedly handling a contractual agreement between the two companies, New Crusading GUIDE has learnt.
AFCONS, which has beenM&E Global Security Ghana’s client on a frosty two years journey relating to deductions of payment due the security because of by AFCONS because of either missing items or Guard absenteeism, in July this year, terminated the contract of its partner.
Narrating their ordeal in the hands of the Indian company to this paper, people with knowledge about what is going on, whom we cloaked with anonymity stated “Since they had terminated our contract we were expecting our final payment. The initial invoice we sent to them was GHC 45,745.73. They slashed the figure down to GHC 30,989.55 stating our guards were absent during their patrols. We refused to accept this because none of our representatives were on board during their patrols to justify their claim and per the agreement at least one of our reps should be present during their patrols.”
The source continued, AFCONS later called for a meeting to enable us reach an amicable decision. We attended meetings on four different occasions just to settle this. They asked that we give them a figure they can work with and we reduced the amount to GHC 39,000 which they later countered to GHC 35,000. We accepted and asked that they pay to which they demanded an invoice in order to release the payment. A discounted invoice of GHC 35,000 was sent to them whiles our rep waited to be given a cheque.
AFCONS, this paper gathered, then demanded for a clearance letter without giving us the cheque. We asked for the details of the cheque in order to prepare the clearance letter. The figure they provided was GHC 32,799 which was not what we agreed on. They stated that they are withholding tax on the GHC 35,000 which was not communicated earlier when we offered to accept their counter figure.
Plus, they refused our clearance letter, gave us what they wanted written on our letterhead and demanded that our rep is not allowed to sign on behalf of the Director even though the Director had given him the mandate. All these make retrieving the payment difficult as the time kept elapsing.
Yesterday, after an almost two months back-and-forth about the payment, the sources said, “We were hoping to receive the payment since what they needed to proceed was the VAT invoice but apparently they had other plans because the rep came back empty handed and the current figure had reduced to GHC 32,799.”
Meanwhile, when this paper contacted one of the representatives of AFCONS, only identifies as
Basanta, he indicated that M&E’s cheque was ready but that all what was left was for the security company to submit an ‘No Claim’ letter for the for the cheque to be released to them.
The No Claim letter, we learnt is a letter to indicate that the two companies have gone their separate ways, with none ever making any future claims.
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