{"id":229473,"date":"2016-07-10T07:04:19","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T07:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=229473"},"modified":"2016-07-10T07:04:19","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T07:04:19","slug":"ecg-subsidy-saga-its-refund-not-realignment-casely-hayford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=229473","title":{"rendered":"ECG subsidy saga: It&#8217;s refund not realignment &#8211; Casely-Hayford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Financial analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford has dismissed assertions by President John Dramani Mahama and the power ministry that the\u00a0billing structure of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) \u00a0is being realigned.<\/p>\n<p>President Mahama \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2016\/07\/06\/weve-not-introduced-electricity-subsidies-mahama\/\"><strong><span style=\"color: #666699;\">recently clarified<\/span><\/strong><\/a> earlier indications that the government would subsidise low-level\u00a0power consumers as well as \u00a0commercial consumers by stating that the\u00a0ECG only realigned their billing structure.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;5lDLMKCcMVJbO26BGNf7AbzItmU2kT0H&#8221;]\u201cIt is not a subsidy. It is a realignment of the billing system that makes it possible for us to be able to know how much we are spending on electricity,\u201d the President said in an address to Muslims on the occasion of\u00a0Eid al-Fitr.<\/p>\n<p>According to Sydney Casely-Hayford however, the\u00a0government\u00a0was only paying back electricity consumers who had been over-billed following the imposition of the new tariffs, which amounted to a refund.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Somebody comes and charges me money for delivering me electricity units and I realise that I seem to be using far more than\u00a0 I thought or it\u2019s costing me far more than I thought it would, based on the tariffs that I had before and the tariffs I have now. Then they admit\u00a0that there is a possibility the meters that we were using to monitor it and the software were not working properly \u00a0and it was miscalculated and therefore I have been over-billed. \u00a0You admit that this is the problem and that you are going to give that money back to me. The word for that is not realignment, it\u2019s not a subsidy, it\u2019s a simple refund. You\u2019re refunding the over-billed amounts to me,&#8221; he explained on <strong>Citi FM&#8217;s <\/strong>news analysis programme<em><strong> The Big Issue<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/JMwater.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-229423 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/JMwater.jpg\" alt=\"Prez Mahama announces construction of 400 small water systems nationwide.\" width=\"800\" height=\"571\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Prez Mahama said ECG had realigned its billing system.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to him, in addressing the over-billing issue, the government can either directly refund affected consumers or reduce their subsequent costs, which appeared to be what it was doing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can give it back to me in two ways; you either give me a cheque after you calculated the difference and you explain to me how much you have over-billed me or you give me credit, which means I\u2019m not going to pay you for a certain amount of money for a period of time. That\u2019s all it is, I don\u2019t understand realignment,&#8221; he said<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By: Edwin Kwakofi\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Financial analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford has dismissed assertions by President John Dramani Mahama and the power ministry that the\u00a0billing structure of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) \u00a0is being realigned. President Mahama \u00a0recently clarified earlier indications that the government would subsidise low-level\u00a0power consumers as well as \u00a0commercial consumers by stating that the\u00a0ECG only realigned their billing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":217749,"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":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider-1","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229473","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\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=229473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/217749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=229473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=229473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=229473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}