Minority Accuses Govt On LPG Shortage

The Minority in Parliament has accused the government of deliberately refusing to tell Ghanaians the truth about the LPG shortage and instead hiding behind ‘cleverly selected’ statistics, conveniently packaged to put blame on the use of the commodity by commercial vehicles, particularly taxi drivers.

It said the overemphasis on the demand side of the equation by the NDC officials, to the seeming neglect of other major factors that play on the supply side, was not only unfortunate but should be regarded as unpardonable since those officials knew the real facts but consciously avoided giving a thorough assessment of the issues.

“The deliberate avoidance of a serious analysis of the decline in domestic production is a matter that should not only attract the attention of the Ghanaians, but indeed is an issue to which we should demand answers from the government”.

Addressing a press conference in Parliament Tuesday, the Minority Ranking Member on Energy, Mr Joseph Kofi Adda stated that Ghanaians could understand the desperation of the President and his team to find a face-saving measures after failing so miserably to deliver their campaign promises on many fronts.

“The lease we expected from for the President is to have instructed his men to simply acknowledge their shortcomings and tell Ghanaians this truth which they deserve as a nation and desist from blaming taxi drivers”.

He explained that on August 18, 2011 on a GTV Press Session, both the Ministry of Energy and the National Petroleum Authority cited a litany of factors that had resulted in the LPG saga.

The factors included: the heavy burden of subsidies; the increase in the nation population; a growth in the consumption of LPG nationwide, particularly in the three northern regions; the limited storage capacity of LPG in the country and the narrow flow of the one multi jetty as factors that had constrained the ability of government to ensure that the nation got adequate supply of LPG for its use.

‘As much as these constraints are indeed pertinent matters that must periodically be addressed in the greater interest of the nation, it is absolutely false, untenable and unacceptable for the government to create the impression that they the major cause of the shortage that we have been experiencing in the past two-and-a-half years”.

Mr Adda pointed out that these factors that had been peddled by the NDC were not new in the industry adding that the government therefore had moral right to cite them as the major causes of the LPG shortage.

“Alluding to these factors should be seen as mere excuses by the administration that is constantly proving to Ghanaians that it is incapable of managing this nation’s affairs”, he stated.

He made it clear that the country’s population did not jump overnight but had been growing steadily over the years as every Ghanaian knew that the government should had plan for such growth in the population.

Mr Adda said it took only the visionary and proactive NPP administration of former President Kufuor to initiate state-sponsored projects while also encouraging private companies to invest in the construction of storage tanks and pipelines.

“Needless to say therefore, that the former President John Agyekum Kufuor and the NPP administration live through these same constraints yet we never experienced such an acute and as prolonged shortage as we are confronted with now”, he said.

He explained that the NPP had no doubt that the major cause of the shortage of the LPG was the NDC’s disruption of the production process of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) by permitting the GNPC to usurp the role of TOR in the lifting of crude oil thereby significantly reducing the domestic supply available to the country and leaving a gap that had not been filled through imports by BDCs”.

In addition, he said the government had failed over the past two years to pay under recoveries of the Bulk Distribution Companies regularly, thus making most of them to withdraw their services from importation of LPG as their businesses were being crippled.

“If these two matter are resolved, we should see a smooth easing of the LPG problem”, Mr Adda stated adding that the one-time importation as announced by the NPA cannot be sustained if under recoveries were not paid while if TOR was not allowed toad on to the supply, the problem could not be resolved.