The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) have both stated that they are overburdened with operational expenditures and are battling to stay afloat.
At a public hearing held by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) in Ho, the manager in charge of corporate, planning, monitoring and evaluation of GWCL, Seth Atiapah, noted that the proposed tariff increment is because of the high cost of production due to pollution, maintenance, debt overhung, inflation and depreciation of the cedi..
“People say they don’t do galamsey, but do you have a small factory, do you have a small workshop, what do you push into the water bodies? Your homes; where do you throw the water away? We are sensitising you so you desist from all these practices,” he said.
“If we continue to do it, the water we have extracted will become more dirty,” Atiapah said, adding: “We will require more money to treat it because we will buy more chemicals. And even in some cases, we have stopped treatment completely because the pollution in the water has made it untreatable”.
Listen to him in the attached audio below:
The ECG is proposing a 148% tariff increment while the GWCL is requesting for 344%.
ECG’s case
The general manager of the regulatory management of ECG, Sylvia Noshie, was quoted by myjoyonline.com to have said that “ECG is currently a struggling distribution company that requires urgent support” therefore the need for a full cost recovery tariff proposal.”
“If you consider the impact of the macroeconomic variables, what it means is that our inadequate distribution service charge, has now diminished, it has dwindled… and this has impacted ECG’s operation. Now the prevailing tariffs as it stands now do not satisfy the cost of distribution these days.”
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