Features
ECG is not a ‘father Christmas’ or charitable institution!
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Electricity is one of the major determinants of economic prosperity of any country in the world. It plays a significant role in undertaking daily activities from cooking, lighting, heating to powering machines in the industrial sector. This facility is essential also for quality healthcare delivery, education, transport, effective communication, mineral exploration and many more. In effect, it serves as a building block on which every sector of a nation’s economy thrives. This in essence, emphasises how crucial and indispensable electricity has been in the existence of human in the 21st century.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Limited, like other essential service providers in our dear nation, is a very important institution as far as the developmental goal of this country is concerned. Without electric power, everything in this country will grind to a halt and it will affect the general cost of living and well- being of people nationwide. The same applies to water which is the twin brother of electricity. Even to pump water to various homes and public institutions, much will depend on electricity to power the generating machines. The importance of these two essential facilities therefore,cannot be overestimated in the country’s development.
ECG AND ITS MANDATED DUTIES
The ECG by law, is mandated to provide quality, reliable and safe electricity services to support socio-economic growth and development of Ghana. The company has over the years, been able to carry out this laudable mission notwithstanding the occasional challenges it encounters in the execution of its duties.
It is a limited liability company wholly owned by the government and operates under the Ministry of Energy. The company is responsible for the distribution of electric power in the southern part of Ghana, namely, Ashanti, Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, Volta and Western regions. The company has over the years grown and transformed into a more effective distributor largely as a result of foreign technical and financial assistance which has enabled it to invest in various areas to improve the quality of the network. It has focused on building many distribution lines and installation of prepaid metering services both domestically and to various institutions across the country. This company has stood the test of time and on the verge of focusing on becoming a regional power trader to grow itself.
CHALLENGES ECG FACES
Although the company is confronted with major challenges such as high level of distribution losses, lack of revenue due to non-payment of bills, poor tariff structure which makes it difficult for the power utilities to make significant investments to improve the sector due to financial constraints, it has to a very large extent live up to high level of expectation.
Currently, there are quite a sizeable number of public institutions that are indebted to the company of millions of Ghana Cedis, thus depriving it of the needed revenue to meet its operational expenses in terms of modern generating equipment and other logistics as well as providing adequate remunerations and service conditions for the workers. On the list of the debtors are, the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service (GES), Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation as well as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). We are informed by news circulating on social media that the Finance Ministry owes the company to the tune of GH¢421,038.02, the National Stadium, GH¢587,087.37, La Palm Beach Hotel, GH¢196,073.62 and the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL), GH¢48,985,505.41. We are told also that recently, the National Taskforce of the ECG Limited, cut power supply to parts of the Kotoka International Airport and the other places as a result of their outstanding debts to the ECG.
UNSCRUPULOUS ECG WORKERS MILKING THE COMPANY
It is, indeed, shameful and regretful that the top management of ECG have relaxed and kept aloof while some state owned and profit making enterprises continue to exploit them to their advantage in huge arrears in electricity bills. Such an unfortunate situation is a total indictment on the leadership of the company and a mark of inefficiency.
It is also a known fact and in the public domain that some unscrupulous workers of the company have turned themselves into contractors and engaging themselves in illegal businesses such as the sale of meters at high prices to prospective applicants and also involved in illegal connections of electricity to interested people, thus depriving the company of the needed revenue. Some of these fraudsters. engage in such illegal businesses with the connivance of some top-level management personnel of the company. Such illegal, unhealthy and fraudulent practices must be checked to enable the company to stand on its feet.
RECENT DEMONSTRATION BY ECG WORKERS
No wonder, there was a recent demonstration by some aggrieved workers of the Accra East branch of the ECG in protest of the continued stay in office of the managing director of the company even though he had attained the retiring age of 60. Clad in red, the workers picketed at the company’s head office in Accra to register their protest and also to demand the removal of Mr. Kwame Agyeman-Budu, the MD from office.
The protesters, led by the divisional leadership under the Trades Union Congress (TUC), noted that the presence of the MD was an illegal invasion of the company’s property, adding that he had to proceed on leave prior to retirement because he had clocked 60 years. They wondered why he was still holding himself as the MD and signing official documents. The aggrieved workers argued that he attained 60 years on February 21, 2021.
ACCUSATION AGAINST THE MD
In a statement, the workers accused the MD of not handling the affairs of the company well since he was appointed. They claimed that his continued stay in office, would collapse the electricity distribution company because to them “he is grossly deficient when it comes to matters relating to administrative and corporate governance”. They further accused him of breaching procurement processes. “A clear example is the award of contract of six substations where the recommendations of the evaluation committee were side-stepped and awarded to other companies,” they alleged in their statement.
It appears that the workers are not comfortable with the continued stay in office of their MD and the appointing authorities need to step in to resolve this thorny issue before they throw this country into total darkness. Their grievances need be studied critically and weighed against the performance of the MD before any extension of his contract is considered.
INVESTIGATION OF WORKERS’ GRIEVANCES
In the midst of huge unpaid debts by some state institutions to ECG while the company needs money to finance its operational costs, one will be convinced to jump to a conclusion that the managing director is either not up to the task or being manipulated from certain quarters not to chase the debtors for what is due the company.
One particular case that most Ghanaians are not happy and uncomfortable with is the case of the Ghana Airports Company Limited which owes the ECG a colossal sum of GH¢48,985,505.41 which necessitated the recent curtailing of power in parts of the Kotoka International Airports in Accra. They wondered why the company had to spend about GH¢128,366 to buy Christmas trees to decorate the airport terminals in the midst of the debt it owes the ECG.
EFFECTIVE PAYMENT OF BILLS NECESSARY
It is a fact that the ECG and other utility service providers in the country rely on the effective payment of bills to provide reliable and continuous services to their clients and customers and, therefore, failure in the payment of bills renders the company impotent in providing that essential services to customers. That will result in frequent power cuts which will be no fault of the ECG. It is important for state owned and private institutions as well as domestic power users to pay their bills promptly to enable the company to serve them better. Let us take note that ECG is not a charitable institution which provides its services free of charge.
Finally, to restore the needed peace and tranquility within the premises of the ECG, the appointing authorities must act with dispatch to resolve the impasse between the workers and the managing director before any unfortunate incident happens.
Contact email/WhatsApp of author:
0277753946/0248933366
By Charles Neequaye
There is a scripture that is found in Matthew 6:22 which says that the lamp of the body is the eye and therefore the eye must see well to enable the body to get to its destination.
What most people do not know is that behind the scenes, there is a strong interaction between the eyes and the brain before a picture becomes clear. The state of mind therefore is crucial to the eye seeing clearly to enable the body to process accurately the information the eyes are feeding it for proper identification of what the eyes see.
This is similar to how a person behaves i.e. what informs the decisions that forms in the mind that results in the actions that a person performs. The actions of a person does not therefore just happen but is as a result of things that went on in the mind, which in most cases resulted from information passed on to it by the eyes either consciously or unconsciously.
There are so many issues that affect our society which makes one wonder, whether the people who displayed such acts were created by someone or something other than God.
How can a person see a beach created by God with beautiful beaches and fresh air blowing all around, decides to defecate at such places, and therefore desecrate the environment? lt is simply mind boggling?
When other people in other countries who dwell on the coast are using their beaches for tourist attraction purposes as a means of livelihood and also to promote environmental health, some people living around our beaches, have turned them into rubbish dumping sites and toilets.
It is a very sad situation and the earlier we did something about it the better. It is a national emergency that must engage the attention, first of the government and then the citizenry, where religious bodies and NGOs must play a critical role.
The things we focus on in this country, needs to be addressed. Our minds which processes the info the eyes send to the brain, must be disciplined. There are certain behaviours that a disciplined mind can ignore even when the eye has provided info to the brain. One of the things a disciplined mind does, is the avoidance of a second look, which is critical for every person who wants to avoid adultery or fornication.
Once a person is not blind, he will see things. The boobs, the ‘shankus’, the coca cola shapes, the light complexioned, the dark complexioned etc. the eyes will definitely see and report same to the brain. What the brain or the mind decides to do or instructs the eye to do is the issue.
It can decide to instruct the eye to take a second look and let the mind drool over it or say ignore it and that will be the end.
If the mind becomes trained to focus on environmental issues like clean environment, the eyes will automatically be reporting on insanitary conditions to the brain as and when it sees them. The mind will pay attention to such data and begin to process them and to identify solutions to deal with the reported insanitary conditions.
There is the need to encourage citizens to train the mind to focus on the right thing so that in tandem with the eyes, focus will be maintained. When the mind is so trained, it communicates with the eye to also focus on hood things that helps in both are spiritual life and our secular lives, for indeed the eyes are the lamp of the body. God bless.
THE relationship between New Times Corporation (NTC) and African Concrete Productions (ACP) is based entirely on matters of the stomach. Each depends on the other in a dietary symbiosis, reinforced by the close proximity of each other
At lunchtime, you’d see a particular set of Times workers marching regimentally to ACP to face the wall. You’d think they are soldiers. It has long been declared that the company manufactures the best kokonte in the Greater Accra Region. ACP is, therefore, a culinary haven for those NTC kokonte fans, both male and female.
As the NTC kokonte warriors cross the border to ACP, you’d see some ACP banku fanatics dancing joyously to NTC. They are lucky folks because they do not have to obtain visa to enter into ‘Times’ to attack the balls of banku with precision and accuracy. They also claim that the lightsoup at ‘Times’ is arguably the best in West Africa.
So the relationship between the two entities was quite cordial and based practically on stomach palaver, until ACP workers staged an industrial revolution, whereupon the managing director, accountant and estate manager were allegedly stripped naked and locked up in a room. An insurgency had began in earnest.
An ACP worker came to ‘Times’, this time not to eat banku and okro. He had come to inform newsmen that juicy stuff awaited them at ACP. It could make a front page lead story.
A camerawoman and a female reporter were accordingly dispatched to go and bring back news, juicy news as juicy as kokonte and groundnut soup.
I was driving to work when I espied the familiar camerawoman clicking away outside the ACP premises. I didn’t see any ‘Times’ reporter but angry workers who were on the verge of getting violent. I slowed down and the driver behind blew his horn at me like a lunatic. I drove on.
Later, I heard the reporter and camerawoman were harassed and brutalised. The report came,. “The camerawoman, Mrs Salome Adonu-Agbottah and reporter Mrs Doreen Allotey, in an attempt to retrieve the camera which the workers had seized from them were severely beaten. They were manhandled and almost pushed into a big gutter opposite the company’s premises.
BRUISES
“….The camerawoman had bruises on her body, her hand bag was destroyed and the money in it stolen. Mrs Allotey’s watch was also snatched and her feet stamped on.”
Luckily, it was not her nose that was trampled upon. She has a beautiful nose.
The bad news was received with extreme sorrow. If the victims had been men, it would not have seemed too bad. But to brutalise women is just unacceptable. The New Times Corporation has not stopped mourning the incident which has been condemned in many circles.
Some people keep asking me why Times sent females to cover a potentially violent demonstration. I tell them they might as well ask why CNN’s amazon, Christina Amanpour, is assigned to cover the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda. She is always on the frontline in jeans and jacket.
Journalism is a potentially hazardous profession, and once you accept to study and practise the trade, you might as well bone up to face any assignment as long as your superiors feel you are capable of handling it or you have demonstrated the capacity to handle it. Both males and females can be assigned anywhere, anytime just like policemen and women are assigned.
The only difference between cops and pressmen is that the latter are armed only with a pen and the former with a gun. The question is should newsmen also arm themselves so that in any event of an assault they would not be found wanting in self-defence? They can’t adequately defend themselves with a pen and a jotter. A pen cannot even disfigure an opponent’s upper lip.
Photo-journalists have particularly suffered violence. Spectator ace-cameraman Vincent Dzatse was severely assaulted by AMA men when he attempted to take pictures of their indiscretions.
Sports cameraman, P. K. Arthur has been beaten more than once at the sports stadium when riots errupted and he wanted to capture it on his lenses.
Some sports journalists have been banned from entering the Accra Sports Stadium by supporters because in their comments, they didn’t write “sense”. Some supporters once nearly lynched Christian Abbew, Spectator Sports Editor, near a courtroom. He was stoned like the biblical Stephen. He had gone to defend a contempt charge.
I think it is time journalists met and discussed how best to defend themselves in any event of an attack by individuals or mobs. In the pursuance of their duty, they must be free from harassment and assault.
Some journalists go to work and return home with a black-eye or a double fore-head. It is just not right. Something has to be done about it. I think journalists should be armed. But first we must be trained in the use of firearms so that our warning shot do not hit below the belt. What about training in Kung Fu?
This article was first published on Saturday, October 17, 1998.
