…Against Kelni GVG, Dismisses Injunction To Stop Contract

A suit filed by some two individuals with the  aim of stopping  the implementation of the $89-million telecommunications revenue monitoring contract the government awarded to the IT firm, Kelni GVG Limited, has been quashed by the Human Rights Division of the Accra High Court.

The two, Ms. Sara Asafu-Adjaye and Mr. Maximus Ametorgoh filed the suit seeking to stop the implementation of the deal, arguing that it would grant Kelni GVG access to their private data, which was a violation of their fundamental human rights to privacy.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Communication has since maintained that the law states that the Common Platform does not have the capability of listening in on phone calls or the data of consumers.

“We are interested in the volumes and the money attached to the volumes; we don’t have any interest in who has called who or what who said to whom” The minister Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekufful explained to the media during a tour of the Common Platform Monitoring Centre located on the premises of the NCA to assuage the fears of Ghanaians,

The Court, dismissed the interlocutory application filed by the two individuals that sought to halt the implementation of the contract.

In their  interlocutory application they implored the court to put an injunction on the deal until the court determined the substantive suit.

But, in its ruling, the court held that the interlocutory application lacked merit and hence dismissed it.

According to the presiding judge, Mr Justice Anthony Yeboah, a Justice of the Court of Appeal with additional responsibility as a High Court judge, the applicants failed to establish a prima facie case that the deal would breach their privacy.

The Ministry of Communications, heexplained had filed an affidavit in opposition to the injunction and argued that there was a filter in place that would prevent Kelni GVG from accessing irrelevant information.

That claim, he said, was not challenged by the telecommunications companies, which indicated that the claim was true.

Mr Justice Yeboah also ruled that on the balance of convenience, the government stood to suffer more hardships than the applicants if the injunction was granted and it (government) won the substantive case.

The applicants, he said, could be adequately compensated if the application was dismissed and they won the substantive case.

He further ruled that from the documents filed by the applicants, it was obvious that they had no personal knowledge of what the monitoring deal was about and that their application was speculative.

“You are peddling evidence less fears,’’ he told the applicants.