Workers of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) earn substantial incomes and other conditions of service but are inefficient, resulting in the Authority being saddled by huge debts, Dr Edward Mahama, presidential candidate of the People’s National Convention (PNC), has said.
Speaking during the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Presidential Debate on the huge debt the VRA owes banks and other institutions including Ghana Gas and N-Gas, Dr Mahama said: “VRA’s problems, as I understand, is actually corruption. I say this because of political interference that allows VRA to absorb debts even from private energy producers. I have been reliably informed that gas meant for VRA for its thermal plants sometimes is diverted somewhere for political reasons.
“Secondly, VRA and ECG and GRIDCo are all agencies that are very inefficient and so if you talk to VRA, they say: ‘ECG owes us’, and you talk to ECG they say: ‘Government owes us’, so the debts keep circling around, you don’t know where actually it starts. But it starts with the corruption that is introduced into the system and the inefficiency.
“For example, ECG doesn’t send its bills regularly to even private consumers, so I can understand even how the government debts come about. So ECG taking power from VRA is not efficient in collecting debt and so they cannot pay VRA. VRA goes to the banks and borrows money to buy its inputs and VRA cannot pay, so it’s a vicious circle. One has to take a bold step and say, ‘VRA, we will pay your debt for you’, by making sure that every government institution is paying ECG so that ECG doesn’t owe VRA all the money they owe and VRA itself has to become efficient and stop wasting government money because “VRA employees and ECG employees are better paid employees in Ghana, yet they are not efficient… The same thing happened with TOR. All these energy sectors are all interlinked and it’s the corruption that is the main thing that I see, so if you can plug the corruption from these agencies, VRA will be able to recover.”
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