The Politics of ECG

History must be repeating itself, for in 2008, the final year of NPP’s H.E. J.A. Kufuor’s administration, some state institutions started doing negative things that brought the NPP, down.

For example, commercial drivers were arrested and taken to court, with most of them doing absolutely nothing wrong. And in such traffic courts, the defendant was not allowed to talk. What the police said, will be the judge’s verdict. So, in 2008, commercial drivers had strong anger against the NPP.

In this final year of H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Ghana has stormed into dumsor, again. Today, nobody remembers the four years of dumsor pandemic under Mills/Mahama, but remembers the three months of dumsor epidemic under Nana Addo, as if dumsor had never happened in Ghana before.

Having stated this, those in authority should not say what is happening today, is not dumsor. Dumsor is a word which found its way into Oxford Advanced Leaner’s Dictionary in 2015 and is defined as a popular Ghanaian term used to describe persistent, irregular and unpredictable electrical power outages. That settles it, we are experiencing dumsor.

But, is ECG embarking on some political agenda to make government, unpopular? One may ask, how possible, since government appointees head the ECG. Well, we should remember that, no matter who the Electoral Commissioner is, it is the electoral officers at the polling stations who can allow rigging to go on.

So, the ECG bosses can do all they can to make government look good, but if those on the ground want to put sand in the government’s ‘gari’, they know where to get the sand.

The facts: In the run up to the outbreak of this dumsor, the ECG took a managerial decision to embark on recoveries of all bills in arrears. With that it started disconnecting power supplies to very essential and important facilities, like the hospitals, among others, for non-payment of bills.

The question is, did those huge bills represent a month’s consumption? Of course, not. Because if bills come up every month, what is the culture of ECG in demanding payments?

With post-paid arrangements, the culture of this utility service provider is not to go, after defaulters, monthly, as required, but rather wait for months or years before sending demand notices and embarking on disconnection for non-payment. Meanwhile the bills continue to pile up.

In some cases, the staff on the ground go to defaulting costumers and instead of collecting payments for bills, they accept personal envelopes and walk away.

The then, USSR embassy in Ghana, rented my father’s house in Labone, Accra for one its diplomats. After the Union dissolved in 1991 and the embassy came under Russia, the diplomat left the country because he was not Russian. My father took over his house to meet huge utilities bill, that may make one think the house was a factory. He had to pay all the arrears because suddenly the service providers, knew how to disconnect services.

The mandated responsibility of utility providers is to make sure customers pay their bills every month. Failure to pay, should result in disconnection of services, so, what did that diplomat give to the staff of ECG and Ghana Water that made them forget how to disconnect services over non-payment of bills.

It makes good sense to say that the huge debt ECG owes its suppliers, has also contributed to the reduction in power supplies to meet demand, and this may result in power outages. If ECG fails to pay the power generating sectors, a day may come they may decide to shut down, then Ghana will encounter a perpetual dum. This will be the result of ECG’s unprofessional conduct in collecting money owed it, by its costumers.

Today, ECG is crying out that ninety-one hospitals owe it, GH¢261 million, with KATH alone owing GH¢27 million as at March this year. That amount cannot be a month’s electricity bill. Where does ECG think any institution, in this case, KATH, can quickly lay hands on millions, to pay up? Why should ECG wait for the bills to pile up?

One could rightly say that such institutions should have been responsible enough to pay their utility bills, monthly. Unfortunately, things do not simply work like that, in the corporate world. Bills that are not on high demand, are set aside for money to be used on more urgent things. So, if ECG seriously, wants its money, it should always be at the doorsteps of such institutions, every month, demanding payment.

What will most likely happen now, is ECG will go into negotiations with these heavily indebted customers, reach some agreements, part payments will be made and a repayment schedule drawn. That will be the end of the story.

ECG will not go and make demands and come again another election year, with bills higher than earlier, there will be major disconnection exercises to make the sitting government unpopular. This is the politics going on in ECG.

There are also pictures on social media suggesting that some miscreants are out there destroying transmission gadgets and other power supply equipment, in order to cut off electric supplies to some areas. Some eyewitnesses confirm this. What is ECG doing about this? Has it not found it responsible enough to notify the security agents for protection of its facilities, or it wants to enhance dumsor?

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