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The General Secretary of the Public Utility Workers Union (PUWU), Mr Michael Adumatta Nyantakyi, has stated that the verbal assurance by the government to maintain workers at the Electricity of Ghana (ECG) after its privatisation is not enough to ensure that their work is safe.

He added that the workers would be comfortable if the assurances are reflected in the ongoing processes of privatising the company.

Speaking to Kasapa FM’s Leticia Ohene-Asiedu on ‘Business Digest with Tish’, Mr Nyantakyi expressed disappointment in how the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo led administration had handled the privatisation of ECG.

According to him, the government has had little time to study the situation, hence there was no need to rush to privatise the company.

“We feel very much disappointed because we thought that a new government should have taken its time to really do a proper appraisal of this whole thing.

“But because of certain timelines which have been set in the Compact, we are just glossing over a lot of issues and just trying to meet deadlines without really looking at all the nitty-gritty in the Compact,” he said.

He was of the opinion that privatisation of ECG would not be the best solution to solve the company’s inefficiency.

“People will talk that the ECG is inefficient so we should privatise it, but if we want to use efficiency as the benchmark, then I doubt which of our public institutions should be left. There’s inefficiency in almost every facets of our public sector,” he mentioned.

Background

Two months ago, the ECG chapter of the ECG declared a three-day nationwide demonstration against the privatisation of ECG.

The demonstration, which took place at the various offices of ECG across the country, lasted for three hours each day from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Mr Nyantakyi, at a press conference in Accra, said the Union had called on the government to review the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact, which seeks to cede ECG to private investors for a period of 25 years.

“We are not asking the Government of Ghana to abrogate the MCC Compact, but we are requesting that the Government of Ghana and MCC should review the Compact.