The President of IMANI-Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, has challenged the National Communication Authority (NCA) to make public, the full details of every amount spent in producing a mobile cellular consumer satisfaction survey.
“First of all we [IMANI-Ghana] have undertaken a nationwide research before. We have done research in relation to the pharmaceuticals and I can tell you that we spent about GHC 30,000 just last year. I am putting it to the NCA to publish every detail of this arrangement,” Mr. Cudjoe said.
The survey sought to determine the perception of mobile phone users with regards to the services they receive from telecommunication service providers.
According to the NCA, the survey was commissioned in September 2012 and the survey report was finalized in September 2013 after data collation, analysis and verification.
The Authority used approximately GHC 3,553,192.16 million in producing the survey report but IMANI Ghana is insisting the amount was over bloated.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Cudjoe said: “Credibility of the exercise itself is questionable,” adding that, the whole survey represents a cooking up of a scheme
“This is just not right, we are suffering as a country right now and we can’t just sit for people to cook up schemes,” he stated.
In a rebuttal, the Head of Consumer and Cooperate Affairs, Nana Defie Badu maintained the amount used represented the entire process of the survey.
Giving the details on why such a huge amount of money was used to carry out the survey, she explained that it was a “nationwide consumer satisfaction survey that covered all the 10 regions of Ghana including all the district areas of Ghana. The sample size was over 13,000 and this had to do with the fact that we wanted to have a fair representation of mobile phone subscribers so we wanted to ensure that we get consumer perception from the rural areas and the urban areas.”
“Obviously, if we wanted to use just a small section of consumers, we would have done a smaller survey but because this is a baseline survey and to determine what the national consumer perception,snapshot or view is, we had to do a survey of this nature,” she added
By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana