Workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana, (ECG) last week, embarked on demonstrations at their offices across the country, against the planned privatisation of the company. The nation-wide protests were planned to coincide with this year’s Public Service International Day, which fell on Friday 23 June.
In Ghana, the Public Utilities Workers Union (PUWU) and the Public Service Workers Union (PSWU) used the occasion to draw attention to their concerns about the planned ECG privatisation.
Government says the privatisation of the ECG will improve efficiency and drive down tariffs; and does not appear ready to consider any other option to deal with ECG’s problems. It is becoming clearer by the day, that no amount of agitation will dissuade the government from embarking on this worrisome venture.
The Public Agenda takes advantage of the occasion of the UN Public Service International Day, to call on government to reconsider its position on ECG in the light of growing public resistance.
We make this call, in view of this country’s experience with a similar project under the then President Kufour administration. Ghanaians will recall that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government between 2003 and 2008 embarked on a venture to place Ghana Water Company under a management contract. Indeed the original proposal had been lease contract, which bears no difference with a concession.
To justify its decision to place Ghana Water Company under the control of a private sector entity, Aqua-Vitends Rand (a consortium of Dutch and South African companies), Ghana Water was starved of resources for its operations. The result was water scarcity which resulted in water rationing across the major cities of Ghana. Frustrated by the unbearable situation, we, ordinary Ghanaians, became agitated and urged the government to give Ghana Water out to a supposedly efficient private sector company to manage. We were lucky the contract was for just five years, and so after a rather poor performance over the contract period, we took the prudent decision to cut our losses by bowing out of the deal, against the option of a renewal of the contract.
It is this same scenario that is playing out today. Government has starved ECG of the resources needed to improve its services to consumers, by refusing to pay the over $500million it owes the company. The debt is said to constitute between 60 and 70 percent of all ECG’s debts. Electricity tariff has had to be increased astronomically to help defray the debt. The increase came about as a result of a 10 percent energy sector levy and upward adjustment of other existing taxes and levies on electricity consumption.
Frustrated by the deteriorating quality of service, and the unbearable increases in tariffs in recent times, which are not the making of ECG, some consumers have begun urging the government to proceed with its privatisation agenda. This is how we give a dog a bad name, in order to hang it.
The President says: “You fix a situation by taking risks;” But we say: You don’t take risks unadvisedly and without weighing the odds. It is certainly not good judgment to give out ECG on a concession for 30 years, especially as countries that have ever experimented with this model of privatisation in the energy sector have done so only on pilot basis and not exceeding 5 years.
Again we wish to remind the President that the “risk we took when we deregulated telecommunications,” is not the same as the risk he wants us to take with ECG. In the case of the telecommunications, we introduced competition, by allowing other players to provide telephony services and to compete with Ghana Telecom. Ghana Telecom was privatised as part of the liberalization process.
We take this opportunity, and in keeping with the purpose of our establishment: to advance the course of the poor and the marginalised – to assure the ECG workers of our unwavering solidarity.
We know you are in your thousands; and together with your families, friends and sympathizers from both within and without the labour front, you will be in your tens of thousands. Add other civil society groups and individuals who have similarly expressed grave misgivings about the planned privatisation, and you will be in your millions.
Such numbers certainly cannot be overlooked in any policy discourse, especially in an election year. Let the President and his advisers pay heed to those who have dissenting views on the planned privatisation and let’s work towards a compromise that best serves the interest of the nation.
Aluta Continua!!!
Source: Public Agenda
