The Independent Presidential Candidate for the 2012 election, Mr Jacob Osei Yeboah, has appealed to President John Dramani Mahama to look again into the utility tariff increases.
In his view, “The mere anarchy of electricity destabilisation and continual increment has broken the economic centre pillars of most individuals and companies.’’
In a statement on the tariff increases, the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) recently appealed to the Public Utility and Regulatory Commission (PURC) to reverse the decision to increase tariffs.
Mr Yeboah, who described the appeal by the CCG as a timely and well-researched heartbeat of Ghanaians, said as one of the pillars of spiritual guidance of Ghana, the CCG had made an irrefutable appeal to the NDC-led government and PURC, for the recent tariff increases to be reversed.
“I am personally adding my voice to this appeal to President Mahama and the PURC to listen to CCG at least, if nothing at all, as stakeholders that hold similar views.”
“Except the government sees the CCG as not credible in their handling of issues of national interest, this is an opportunity for the government to showcase its respect for the CCG and by extension the constituencies they represent,’’ he stressed.
He said the CCG’s-reasons for its decisions were not only factual but unadulterated truth.
Mr Yeboah expressed concern about why genuine consumers were being made to pay for the inefficiencies of those utility companies.
Moreover, he said, previous increment with same promises had not led to the slightest relief in the load-shedding exercise in the past four years.
He said there was an unprofessional and uninformed argument making rounds that “since consumers pay higher for alternate sources of power outside the national grid, they should be prepared to pay higher tariffs”.
According to Mr Yeboah, that argument suffers glaucomatous perspective towards creating country-specific advantages for global competitiveness.
He explained that now that Ghana had joined oil-producing countries, with advantages of lower energy cost that catapults nations into industrialisation, nothing should be done to derail the county’s competitiveness.
President Mahama, he said, recently made a startling revelation of the fact that consumers were made to pay more because of illegal connections.
He said it was an admission by President Mahama about how unfair and unreasonable the current level of tarrif increment was.
Mr Yeboah, therefore, urged the PURC not to take the lazy path in solving the inefficiencies of the utility companies.
The independent presidential candidate stressed that a critical strategic path devoid of socio-political influence but rather rooted in socio-economic permanent solutions ought to be researched and consumers educated accordingly.
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