African Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) has described as “a waste of time,” the committee set up by the Power Ministry to collect monies owed the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
ACEP is of the view that the Minister should rather dismiss the workers at ECG who have failed in their duty to collect the debt owed the company.
“I think that Dr. Kwabena Donkor can do better. There are people in charge of collecting debt at ECG. If they are not performing, what the Minister needs to do is to fire them and get the appointment of competent people who can this and recover the debt of ECG,” suggested the Executive Director of ACEP, Dr. Amin Adams.
[contextly_sidebar id=”OTcFH3JTprwRX4Xzs9E2c63mtCToXyO5″]Over the weekend, the Power Minister, Dr. Kwabena Donkor inaugurated a committee tasked to retrieve all monies owed the ECG by both private and public institutions.
He indicated that the ECG urgently needs cash infusion to function better because the power distributor is on the brink of collapse as the company is owed about GHC 500 million.
He said: “We are on the brink of collapse if we do not have cash infusion and yet we are owed hundreds of millions of cedis. This, ladies and gentlemen, cannot and must not be allowed to continue.”
But in reaction to this, Dr. Adams stressed that the committee is needless because the Minister who is a key member of the Mahama government is better placed to force government which is the largest debtor to the ECG to pay its debt.
“The Minister doesn’t need to set up a committee to collect these debts for them. That is not the role of the Minister,” he said.
According to him, Dr. Donkor’s duty is to make policies and coordinate the work of agencies under him and “in this case, he has all the power to ensure that the right people are in ECG to ensure that ECG recovers its debt.”
ACEP’s Executive Director observed that the bulk of the debt of over GHC 500 million is owed by government and the Minister who is in cabinet must “get government to pay its part of the debt.”
He asked, “if the Minister cannot get government to pay its debts, is it the committee that can force government to pay its debt to ECG?”
“That is not the way to go about getting ECG financially strong and I think that the Minister of Power should come again because the committee is a non-starter,” he added.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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