Features
High ‘service charges’: PURC ‘colluding’ with ECG?
A lot of Ghanaians are expressing uncontrollable anger over the recent high service connection charges being implemented by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
The ECG’s high service connection charges which took effect on 1st February, 2022, is particularly raking the bile of some young men and women who are ‘struggling’ to put up their own houses.
Also included in the ‘anger-circle’, are enterprising young Ghanaians who are venturing into the real estate development sector of the nation’s building and construction industry.
For instance, before the high service connection charges took effect on 1st February, 2022, the ECG charged GH¢400 to draw a single-phase service line from the nearest ECG pole to the customer-end installation and terminated it in an energy meter.
Currently, the ECG charges GH¢1,020 to draw a single-phase service line from the nearest ECG pole to the customer-end installation and terminates it in an energy meter, thus, adding GH¢620 to the previous charge of GH¢400.
Previously too, the ECG charged GH¢700 to draw a three-phase service line from the nearest ECG pole to the customer-end installation and terminated it in energy meter.
But currently, company charges GH¢1,920 to draw a three-phase service line from the nearest ECG pole to the customer-end installation and terminates it in an energy meter, thus, adding GH¢1,220 to the previous charge of GH¢700 .
Previously, when ECG installed a single-phase additional meter to customer-premises that already had an ECG service line and energy meter, it charged GH¢82.25 pesewas but now, it charges GH¢700 for a single-phase separate meter, thus, adding GH¢617.75 pesewas to the previous GH¢82.25 pesewas.
And for a three-phase separate meter, it now charges GH¢1,300 as against its previous charge of GH¢176, thus, adding GH¢1,124 to the previous GH¢176.
Judas Nii Ankrah, an Accra-based Chamber and Hall ‘house owner’ says; “the ECG’s new service connection charges are not only incredibly astronomical but also an attempt to encourage ‘struggling’ new house owners to ‘specialise’ in doing illegal electricity connection to their new ‘homes’.”
He said, “Government must quickly scrap the new service connection charges to enable people to light their ‘homes’,” adding that , “after all, we pay for the services of the ECG till thy kingdom come after their installation of the electricity in our ‘houses’.”
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) , usually, engages utility service providers in series of stakeholder consultation meetings to gather relevant data and enhance transparency and credibility in tariff review processes , as part of its mandate of examining and approving rates that will be charged for water and electricity tariffs in Ghana.
Following up on data submitted by the utility service providers, the PURC holds meetings to discuss updates, clarify and address other pertinent issues, besides making projections.
Such consultative meetings are intended to assist PURC in improving its rate-setting guidelines.
One young real estate developer also adds:”The PURC is also expected to hold extensive consultations with key stakeholders to ensure that tariff processes are more transparent before a final decision is made.”
He said:”PURC’s announcement of public input for the 2022 electricity tariff’s was absent, unlike the case of the previous years.”
A Takoradi-based landlord insists that in accordance with the PURC Act, 1997 (Act 538), “the PURC must initiate processes for the examination and approval of electricity and water tariffs but for the 2022 ECG service connection charges, the PURC failed to do so.”
He added:”Interested organisations, groups and the general public are invited to submit any inquiries or representations in respect of review of tariff’s to the PURC but for the year 2022 , nothing was heard from the PURC .”
The Assin Central Member of Parliament, Mr. Kennedy Agyapong , is urging President Akufo-Addo and the Energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, to quickly act against the implementation of the high electricity service connection charges and other tariff’s.
“The astronomical electricity service connection charges and other tariff’s will surely threaten the survival of businesses in the country”, he said, stressing that “it will also affect the chances of the New Patriotic Party , winning the 2024 national elections, if the Government sits idle for the PURC and the ECG to implement such atrocious electricity charges.”
Speaking on his NET 2 television network, Mr Agyapong said, “with the ridiculous electricity charges, businesses in the country will surely be heading towards a ditch.
“I don’t know the level of Independence of the PURC that makes them approve such electricity price increases like that but the President and the Energy Minister must not allow them to drive businesses into a ditch.”
The Minority in Parliament is also demanding the immediate suspension of what they describe as “clandestine hikes in electricity tariffs endorsed by the PURC.”
Addressing the press in Parliament on February 16, 2022, a ranking member on Energy and Mines Committee of Parliament, Mr. John Jinapor, said: “We did our own investigations and realised that the PURC has secretly approved the increase of electricity tariffs by huge margins.”
Mr Jinapor, who is also the Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu Constituency said:”The law demands that before the PURC can make such adjustments, they will need to consult the customers and consumers.
“Secondly, after the increment, they need to inform Ghanaians but they have done this secretly and they have started charging the people and this is insensitive and illegal.”
The PURC’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Bawah Munkaila, however, told TV3 in an interview on Thursday, February 17, 2022, that “the PURC has not yet adjusted tariffs for the year 2022.”
“But the fact of the matter is that the ridiculous electricity service connection charges and other tariffs are being implemented by the ECG,” Mr. Ernest Donkor, an angry new house owner who has applied for a new single-phase service connection line to his ‘nearly completed building ‘ at Somanya, has said.
“The ECG, without any prior notice, suddenly announced on social media in the middle of January, 2022, that the atrocious electricity service connection charges and other tariffs will take effect on 1st February, 2022, and, indeed, it took effect from that date without any whimper from the PURC,” Mr. Donkor added
Readers, from the foregoing what are your expectations from the Government, the PURC and the ECG in resolving the issues in contention?
By G. Frank Asmah
Contact email/ WhatsApp of the author:
asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
