The Big Issue<\/strong>, the Member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa and minority spokesperson on energy predicted of extreme hardship on the already burdened Ghanaians if the proposals are approved.<\/p>\n\u00a0\u201c\u2026I do not advocate that the poor people of Ghana should be squeezed the way it seems to be happening\u2026\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The former energy minister however cited the huge debts owed especially by the government as accounting for the challenges facing the various providers.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWe do know that ECG is owed about 1.2 billion cedis, VRA is owed about 1.4 billion, VRA pays for Asogli\u2019s power gas consumption, Asogli is not able to pay VRA quickly so we have that snowball effect and government is not paying ECG,<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026Indeed of the 1.2 billion, government\u2019s indebtedness may be about 70 percent, you have these figures outstanding and you are going to talk about tariffs?\u201d he queried.<\/p>\n
K.T. Hammond also disagreed with assertions that utility consumers pay the increased prices following government\u2019s inability to continue to subsidize prices of utility.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe reckless dissipation our resources have been put, if we had put our resources into good use, we won\u2019t have the situation that we are talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile K.T. Hammond has criticized the pressure on government from international agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank. These agencies he said, are insisting that consumers be made to pay realistic prices for utility.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an unfair situation we are being given a very wrong treatment, I do not like it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
By: Pius Amihere Eduku\/Citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former Deputy Minister of energy under the Kufuor administration, Kobina Tahir Hammond says calls for an increase in the prices of utility by service providers in the country will burden Ghanaians. Utility providers have advocated a 100 percent increase in the prices of utility citing the continuous depreciation of the Ghana cedi as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":75336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,17],"class_list":["post-149081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-wassa-akropong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=149081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=149081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=149081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=149081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}