Calling The Utilities Regulator

Electricity consumers may be said to be currently between the devil and the deep blue sea.

While they have been suffocating in mosquito-ridden pitch darkness for the past six months, the power service providers, whose middle name could well be said to be 'Inefficient', have submitted proposals to the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for a 166 per cent increase in tariff.

The Volta River Authority (VRA), the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), in separate petitions to the PURC, claim that their costs have ballooned since the last increase approved for them in 2011.

Reports quote the ECG's head of Public Relations as saying that 'since the last adjustment of tariffs in 2011, prices of goods and services had gone up severally, and the cedi had also depreciated against the dollar, leading to overall increment in operational cost.

'Distribution services depreciated by almost 30 per cent within the same period, in terms of fuel, importation of cars to aid operations, purchase of spare parts, and importation of transformers,' he added.

Additionally, the ECG is said to be selling under cost, as it buys a unit of electricity from the VRA, the power generator, at 8 cents per unit, but sells at four cents to the general public.

Mr. Kofi Kapito, CEO of the Consumer Protection Agency, concedes the need for an increment, but does not believe the service providers actually need as much as they are demanding. He said he had seen documents that show that the VRA made a profit in 2012, and wonders at the source of its alleged difficulties.

Dr. Charles Y. Wereko-Brobbey, former CEO of VRA, also appreciates the need for a rise in tariffs, but that the proposal to PURC, requesting between 19 and 30 per cent in tariffs, was 'absurd', as there had been about a 12 per cent fall in the cost of crude oil in the last 12 months.

He added: 'We need to really, vigorously look at the numbers to arrive at a cost that we know is justifiable, in terms of the cost of producing the power.'

The Chronicle hereby calls on the PURC to do its duty as the consumers' buffer against the tornado of the service providers. He should go strictly according to its established mode for interrogating such demands for tariff increases.

We understand this includes public advertisements by the service providers, spelling out the income that accrued from the last increase, and what they did with it to the consumers' benefit, which would be followed by a stakeholders' meeting moderated by the PURC.

Given that it is only the quantum of increase that is in dispute, it is inevitable that consumers would be footing higher electricity bills by the end of July 2013.

However, The Chronicle calls on the PURC not to allow the introduction of the new tariffs until after one full month of uninterrupted power supply. For that whole month, no Ghanaian should be heard bemoaning dum-so, dum-so.

It is said that he who comes to equity must do so with clean hands. The utilities suppliers need to prove their capacity to be efficient as a pre-condition for tariffs increases.