Kodzo Yaotse, Policy Lead for Petroleum and Conventional Energy at the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), has linked the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) current financial challenges to managerial inefficiencies.
His comments follow concerns from the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), which highlighted ECG’s non-compliance with the revised Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM).
Experts believe that ECG’s ongoing financial losses contribute to this non-compliance.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, Yaotse emphasized that these inefficiencies have persisted for years and are not confined to the current administration.
He noted that political interference has led to poor decision-making that impacts both the financial sustainability and technical viability of ECG and the broader power sector.
Yaotse argued that state company managers should be dismissed if they are found to be ineffective.
“Every assertion that has been made on Ghana’s power sector over the last decade identifies that one, ECG is the richest link of the power sector. Two, the problems that ECG have has to do with managerial inefficiency, and also the technical problems that it has. In that contention, we say that managerial inefficiency perpetuates the technical challenges that the company is having.
So, over time, you will see that the political pessimist allows ECG to make some decisions that do not orger well for the financial sustainability of the company and the sector as well as the technical viability of the same. So, it is not something that is limited to this current administration yes, but at what point do we start to call for sanctions for ECG managers of public entities?
“Should we say that because some other people have mismanaged it in the past or let’s continue mismanaging it, we have to come to a point when we say, yes we have to start fixing the problem from today and if there are people who have superintended over losses within a period, they have to go so that more competent and reliable people can come in and fix the problem that we are all taking about,” he stated.
