Minister for Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has encouraged Ghanaians to pay for electricity consumed in order to make the various agencies under the Energy Ministry viable.
He explained that the unavailability of cash sometimes contributes to the protracted intermittent power supply which he believes can be avoided.
Dr. Opoku Prempeh was addressing the media on development in the energy sector when he made this known.
He said: “if you have one of your switch yards going off, what we have put in place to avoid burning, over charging, your lines tripping. If even this morning whiles we were here the only transformer that was going to bring power to this side collapses, there’s not much you can do.
“But if GRIDCo is solvent, it is financially viable, then it can quickly replace that transformer but if a transformer gets burned and it’s a machine, it can get burned and it’s going to take them two years, we are going to feel the effect. If we don’t pay for what we consume, we cannot also begin to maintain what we have to maintain.,” he said.
The Minister acknowledged that in recent times, there has been intermittent power cuts but indicated that the responsibility has been placed on GRIDCo and ECG to identify those faults and work on correcting it as quickly as possible.
On state institutions owing Electricity Company of Ghana, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh indicated government policy has been to provide all MDAs with prepaid meters. He said although some have been provided others have not been provided because ECG has not got the wherewithal.
Dr. Opoku Prempeh indicated that the ECG task force will continue to work at ensuring that monies owed them by these institutions are paid to ensure that they are solvent.
He indicated that going to court will be the last resort but rather will work at ensuring that a court order grants them the opportunity to take the money directly from the accounts of these state institutions.
