The newly elected Chairman of the Senior Staff Association of the Volta River Authority, (VRA), Cephas Duse, has revealed that the power producer is owed to the tune of five billion Ghana cedis. This he said is crippling the company’s effort to be financially viable.
He mentioned the mining sector and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as the major debtors of the company. “As at September 2016, the independent power producers owe the VRA to the tune of five billion Ghana cedis.” Mr. Duse made this known in an interview with Citi News on the side-lines of a biennial conference at Akuse in the Eastern Region.
The conference among other things was to discuss the issues affecting the company and the way forward. Newly elected executives were sworn into office to steer the affairs of the association in the company. According to him, “What is happening with the VRA is that, we basically procure LCO gas and these are very expensive inputs; and they are dominated in foreign currency and when you buy these inputs it’s expected that when you sell to the public you get your money back.
And when we don’t get the money back we turn to the bank to get loans to buy again and the cycle continues. We sell to them and they don’t pay,” he lamented. Mr. Duse said the legacy debt has come about as a result of the unpaid debts of the VRA.
He said government is largely to be blamed for the woes of the VRA. “Government is largely to be blamed for the problems of the VRA since it is not allowing VRA to operate as a commercial entity. VRA is a power generating company and if we sell power and we are not paid, how can we survive?” He queried.
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