I see the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is on a mass disconnection exercise, cutting off those who owe it money from the grid. This should have been their core duty all along. It is instructive to note that after collecting fees from their clients, they are by law expected to remit the power generation companies, (in this case VRA, Asogli etc), pay what is due the power transmitters (in this case GRIDCO etc) and then keep about 40 percent for distributing power to us. Unfortunately for a very long time, ECG arrogated unto itself a larger chunk of what it collects, pays peanuts to power generators and transmitters, and goes to party with the rest through truncated and bloated procurement processes and fees. Only few times has the ECG returned profits notably between 2007 and 2011. Since then, unfortunately, ECG has become a haven for corrupt acts supervised all the way to the top. ECG argues that government owes it so much it is unable to perform its functions. That may partially be true. However successive governments have always borrowed money and passed on to the ECG , which quite frankly means, if we did a real audit, there are times when the ECG should rather be indebted to the government. However one needs to properly audit the books of ECG which at this stage remains a fetish, a ghost enterprise unless as yours truly is able to get to the apex of ECG to learn from insiders the rot that has plagued this national wasting asset. Friends, unless we privatize 90% of ECG the erratic power supply will continue. This is not the time for government to invest hard cash in all sorts of power barges to please us- we will only be postponing our funeral and will be buried d under a pile of debt. This is why I support the energy Ministry’s and the MCC, MiDA resolve to have ECG privatized and I urge them to go for 90% of ECG. ECG is the main reason we are in this power mess, and I do hope that we get busy chopping it up for private players to let us have our peace- Until that is done, whatever ECG collects through its rushed mass disconnecting exercise will end up in the bottomless pit, at least 80% of it.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 08:13:08 +0000