The running mate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has waded into the controversial private sector management contract for the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
According to him, it will be unfair to privatize the ECG since government has denied the company the requisite resources needed for its efficient operation.
[contextly_sidebar id=”NFM7wf9AJut6fFW0b8XpI3g4yJPeBNrk”]President Mahama had earlier insisted that government had no plans of privatizing the state owned company, but he somewhat made a u-turn when he defended government’s attempt to privatize the company at the opening ceremony of the 2016 edition of African ICT and Mobile expo, MOBEX .
The President explained that the move is necessary to make the company more efficient.
“People may argue that Electricity is so important that it must be monopolized by the state. Why are you allowing private sector in; but we have had this system for years, and it’s not working. If it’s not working, we fix it.You fix a situation by taking risks. It is a risk we took when we deregulated telecommunications. If you are not ready to take risks then the world is not ready to make progress,”said the President.
Bawumia disagrees with President Mahama
But Dr. Bawumia disagrees with President Mahama’s assertion.
According to him, in order to make the ECG more efficient, government must honour its debt to the company.
“The issue for me is how to make ECG more efficient. There are governance issues in terms of corporate accountability and so on that you can look at but fundamentally what is government doing about the debt that it owes ECG? Will ECG be an efficient company necessarily if it was being run properly and the finances were in place?
“I think that in a way we have been a little bit unfair to the ECG because we are saying that we are not going to pay you [ECG] what we [government] owe you and you are in trouble so because you are trouble, we have to sell you. I don’t think that it is fair, if you want to privatize regardless, you can make a case for it but you cannot say [you are taking such a move] because the ECG is inefficient.”
–
By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana