Workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) have been in the news in recent times, following their protest against the intended handing over of the state owned company to a concessionaire to handle it for the next 30 years, starting from January next year.
Led by the Public Utilities Workers Union (PUWU), the workers are contending that apart from job losses, which are obvious to every worker of the company, when government duly executes this action, it would lead to increase in tariffs.
The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), the implementation agency, is also insisting that workers of ECG should have nothing to fear and that no worker would be sacked as a result of a concessionaire taking over the running of the company.
Though this is not the first time MiDA is assuring workers of the ECG that they would not be sacked when management changes hands and that a clause would be inserted in the contract to protect the workers, The Chronicle still thinks the issue must be looked at dispassionately, before a contract is signed to ‘sell off’ ECG to the new concessionaire.
As the Akan adage goes, “if you have not tasted death before, see how sleep looks like.” When the then Ghana Telecom was being sold to Vodafone UK, majority of Ghanaians kicked against it, but the promoters of the sale came out with sugar-quoted words that no worker of the company would be laid off , when a deal was finally struck to hand over the company to Vodafone.
This obvious Public Relations gimmick was, unfortunately, swallowed hook line and sinker by the workers of the then Ghana Telecom.
Anyone who opposed the deal was seen as an enemy of progress by the workers, who had clearly been brainwashed that the sale of the company would improve upon their livelihoods. The workers (GT) organized series of demonstrations and press conferences to back their demand that the company be sold to Vodafone. Those opposing the transaction had no option than to buckle under and allow the company to be sold to Vodafone.
A few months after taking over the reins of the company, Vodafone decided to downsize its working staff – an action which affected more than one thousand workers. The very workers who supported the deal were paid back with dismissals.
Today, all the then GT workers who stood and defended the sale of the company have regretted their actions, but it is now too late as nothing can be done about it now. It is based on these historical antecedents that The Chronicle is advising workers of the ECG to buckle down and ensure that they do not suffer the fate of the former GT workers.
“It is also not the case, as alleged in the press statement by PUWU that, high tariff will result from the concession agreement. “On the contrary, improved performance and reduction in the current loses of ECG should facilitate progressive lowering of tariff,” MiDa said in a press statement released in Accra recently.
“The ECG financial and operational turnarounds project also recognizes the need for significant investment in the power distribution infrastructure and the operational systems of the ECG.
“It is in response to that need that over US$350 MILLION OUT OF THE US$ 498.2 million for the compact program has been allocated to the ECG,” MiDA added.
As we have argued in the sale of the GT, these were some of the words churned out by the promoters of the sale, but at the end of the day, none of them were implemented. The concessionaire, who will win the bid to run ECG is surely not going to be ‘Father Christmas’, but a serious company which aims at earning profit to recoup its investment.
It is an undeniable fact that the current hike in the electricity tariffs was as a result of the Karpower and Ameri plants which were brought in to help solve the debilitating energy crisis. The cost of running these plants is very high and in order to ensure their smooth running, the consumer was made to bear the cost.
MiDA is an agency that has been tasked to oversee the giving out of ECG to a concessionaire. They would, therefore, do everything possible to ensure that their mandate has been fulfilled. Their prescriptions to us at The Chronicle could be a deadly poison that must not be consumed by the ECG workers.
PUWU, the umbrella body of the workers, must ensure that every clause providing job security for the workers is firmly grounded in law.
The Vodafone case should guide the workers and indeed entire Ghanaians to put mechanisms in place to prevent laying off of workers and arbitrarily increases in power tariffs after the concessionaire has started running the company.
If the government of Ghana had decided to retire its indebtedness to the struggling power company, the issue about concession would not have arisen in the first place. We need to set our priority right, instead of the unbridled privatization that we, as a country, have resorted to.