Ghanaians, over the years, have endured the inefficiency of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), despite the often periodic increases in tariffs, occasioned by promises of improvement in services.
The consumer, have been at the receiving end of everything that, is wrong with the company, without hitting the streets or locking their offices to demonstrate against the operations of the power producer, if ever we have demonstrated, it was against a particular regime or government.
The government and the workers of the power producer have been in a stand-off, ever since the planned privatization of the company, was announced.
The workers in complete defiance and insult to Ghanaians, who are experiencing a new version of load management, decided to demonstrate on Thursday against the calls for privatization.
Every assurance the government has given that, the privatization will not lead to loss of jobs, have fallen on deaf ears.
The actions of the workers, was nothing short of selfish and a betrayal of the trust of the people, who have been taken for granted over the years. What was even more disturbing was that, they locked their offices to customers for hours, whiles customers have lined-up to do business with the company, which is crying over lack of funds.
The workers themselves know that, the company needs to be resourced, if it is ever going to have any chance of survival.
The transmission losses the company incurs, as a result of obsolete equipments, keeps increasing every year, despite every efforts to halt it.
The privatization will not only lead to the viability of a once vibrant company, but will also ensure that, consumers in the long run, pay less for electricity, because of the halt or reduction in the transmission losses.
Efficiency leads to the reduction in the cost of production, because all factors of production will be employed to the fullest.
If the workers of the ECG, cannot trust the word the president, who has given the fullest assurance yet that, no worker of the company is going to suffer, when the privatization finally kicks in, who again do they want to trust?
Recently, when some workers of the company started receiving threats on their lives by angry customers, who felt they were over-billed, caused by the problem of the new billing software acquired, they were jittery and called on the government to act.
They are not the only people who are angry or can get angry, consumers are more angrier than them, so they should not take our meekness to mean we are okay with what we are going through.
Who will embark on such a demonstration at a time , we are experiencing a new load-shedding?
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