Sanction Ministers, Civil Servants Who Don�t Pay Bills � Sam George

A member of the NDC Communications team, Samuel George Nartey has called on President Mahama to crack the whip on ministers and civil servants who waste utilities such as electricity and water at the ministries, to cut down the leakages in the system. Speaking on Adom FM on Monday March 11, Samuel George made a passionate appeal to the President to sanction Ministers whose ministries fail to settle their utility bills, especially electrical, because the Ministry of Finance releases funds to settle those bills. �[The President must] crack the whip on those ministries who fail to pay their electricity bills. The Ministry of Finance releases funds for them to pay, but when you ask them they say they used it for capacity building. What they really mean is they have used it to buy �chinchinga� and khebabs. The president must crack the whip,� he declared with passion. �From 7am when the secretary goes to work, the air conditioner in the Minister�s office is turned on. No matter the time he comes, the AC is on. If he is engaged elsewhere, if he has to attend a meeting, nobody turns the AC off. Why should that be the case?� He also accused some ministers of failing to emulate President Mahama�s lifestyle. �The President goes to work in a saloon car, but Ministers who live at Cantonments drive to the Ministries in 4x4s, V8 and the rest. These vehicles are turned on with air conditions running. Why? This must stop.� In a related development, Samuel George Nartey has described the call for an upward tariff adjustment by the utility companies as �grossly, morally unfair� and shows the companies are not feeling the pain of the ordinary Ghanaian. Media reports last week indicated that the Volta River Authority and utility suppliers in the country had made a demand for an upward adjustment in prices in order to remain viable and provide quality services. This demand has however been met with uproar by the ordinary citizenry, who are struggling with erratic power supply, chronic water shortage and weeks without LPG. Government officials and NDC communicators, including Felix Ofosu Kwakye and Alhaji Inusah Fuseini have however supported the call for an upward tariff adjustment.