ECG will not be privatised – Mahama assures Organised Labour

President John Mahama has assured Organised Labour that he does not intend to privatise the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

He says, under his presidency, the Electricity Company of Ghana will enter into a Public Private Partnership (PPP) to revive its operations.

Speaking at the May Day celebrations in Accra, the President explained that ECG will use PPP to revive and strengthen its operations.

” The ECG has been facing a culture of poor governance over the last eight years with a debt of 68 billion cedis and rising. If we don’t do anything drastic, our own power sector will collapse. We can only bring down power tariffs to improve efficiency in the distribution of power. Let me assure you it is not my intention to privatise ECG as an institution.”

“Our attention is more a public private collaboration to inject efficiency into our downstream electricity distribution system,” he noted.

But that assurance has not convinced leadership of Public Utilities Workers’ Union (PUWU) and the Public Services Workers’ Union (PSWU).

General Secretary of PUWU, Timothy Nyame, said they are not convinced by what the President said.

“PPP and privitization are one and the same. So once I have heard PPP, it means is just a name that they have changed bringing part of privitization in it. All that we are trying to tell His Excellency is that we have the competencies that it takes to work in ECG,” he said.

The General Secretary of the PSWU, Bernard Adjei, implored the President to include the unions in the PPP arrangement.

“Let’s engage to know what form of private participation they should bring. As stakeholders we will scrutinize it. We are in the industry, our workers are in the industry we will scrutinize it and make our input and the promise he has given we believe he will listen and the energy sector will be released from the leeches and the political cronies that have hijacked the sector and are making money for themselves at the expense of the ordinary Ghanaian,” he said.

The Public Utilities Workers Union and the Public Services Workers Union insist that the partnership is simply privatisation in disguise and they will resist any move that threatens the public ownership of ECG.

The post ECG will not be privatised – Mahama assures Organised Labour first appeared on 3News.

Read Full Story