The Member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa, KT Hammond, wants the government to settle all its debt owed the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) following its assumption of previous duties.
This he says will put the company on a sound footing to carry out its operations.
The termination of the PDS concession deal puts ECG back in charge of power distribution in the Southern Zone of the country.
Speaking to Citi News, the former Deputy Energy Minister said ECG is more than capable of managing power distribution in the country.
“The government should as a matter of urgency, give ECG, the money it was going to pay PDS. There was an arrangement put in place – which for me wasn’t neat. The government’s debt to ECG had been re-fenced; that was what the Mahama government did. The government should as a matter of urgency, make sure that all its indebtedness is paid. You have no idea how much money the government owes ECG. One of the reasons ECG wasn’t performing well was as a result of the debt owed it.”
“It is the government’s responsibility to pay the debts but it didn’t and ECG has to carry it on their back. ECG has not been able to pay all its power producers and that is pretty killing. So now that we are back to square one, I will recommend that as a matter of urgency, we put them on the right footing, give them the money to settle their indebtedness”, he added.
ECG is said to be owing Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in the country huge sums of money although it occasionally receives money from the state to defray part of the debt.
The IPPs which supplied about 1,500 megawatts of electricity have constantly threatened to shut down their plants if the government fails to settle debts owed them.
Now, following the government’s termination of the PDS concession agreement, ECG immediately assumed full control of electricity distribution business in the southern part of Ghana which was hitherto being handled by PDS.
PDS workers won’t be worse off under ECG
The Public Relations Officer of ECG, Daniel Adjei Larbi has said, “whatever condition of service that they [PDS staff] are enjoying now, we are bringing it on board, that is not a problem at all,” he said.
Concerning the roles of the various staff, he said that there may be instances of “little alignments” to the roles played by some PDS officers.
“There may have been some conditions and other things there that made them [PDS staff] happy. I don’t think they were not happy with ECG [in the past]. ECG will do all within its power to make the workers better and not worse off,” Mr. Adjei Larbi said.