Minister of Energy Boakye Agyarko says government has succeeded in stabilizing the supply of power.
“Our next mandate is to begin the reduction in pricing,” he pointed out.
He indicated that already the Ministry is getting cooperation from stakeholders to achieve the set target.
“We believe that through this budget to the end of the year, we should be able to start bringing prices down,” he said on Wednesday at a press briefing in Accra.
Ghana had battled erratic power supply, popularly known as Dumsor, from late 2012 until 2016.
The then National Democratic Congress (NDC) government said power production was gradually getting expensive and, so, consumers were made to pay more for a stable supply.
The cost of production is still a worry to consumers despite a promise by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to reduce tariffs in one of his many campaign promises.
“We have to find the way of reducing the cost of production,” Mr Agyarko admitted, “and we are working on it.”
He added: “We are getting a lot of cooperation.”
‘Adabraaka’
But a major issue within power supply chain is the privatization of the major distributor Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
On Tuesday, some staff of the Company demanded their severance packages as government gets ready to hand over the operations of the power firm to a new company.
“Government must listen to us now,” the workers demanded on Tuesday during their picketing demonstration.
In response, the Energy Minister said: “As for that one ‘Adabraaka’. If you decide to leave ECG, then you will be paid your severance”.
“But you should not have the expectation or guarantee that the new company will take you on. You have made the decision to sever your relations with ECG and it should not put you in a faithful expectation that going forward you have a job.”
This answer seemed not to have gone down well with the Public Utilities Workers’ Union (PUWU), the mother union of the ECG staff.
Its General Secretary, Michael Nyantakyi, said on TV3’s News 360 on Wednesday that: “We are not going to jump at his responses in the media”.
He expressed worry that several correspondences with the Minister have not been responded to and to go the way the Minister has gone, to them, is not the best.
Source: 3news.com|Ghana