The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has restored power supply to the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation’s (GBC’s) local radio station in the Ashanti Region – Garden City Radio – having been disconnected from the national grid last week Thursday.
According to ECG, the national power distributor, GBC had failed to settle its GH¢1.75 million debt despite persistent promptings.
Before the ECG’s action, the Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid, who has oversight responsibility over the state broadcaster, had written to his colleague at the Ministry of Energy to intervene so that the ECG would not carry out the disconnection exercise.
In the said letter written in August 2017, the information minister drummed home the need for constant power supply to the GBC local radio station because of its strategic nature and the service it renders to rural communities.
“We entreat you to use your good offices to get ECG to stop these disconnections, while we (Ministry of Energy, GBC, NMC and the Ministry of Information) meet to find a solution to GBC’s indebtedness to ECG,” part of the letter indicated.
However, this could not stop officials of the ECG from carrying through their intended disconnection, in the face of protestation by some aggrieved workers of the radio station.
It took the timely intervention of personnel from the Asokwa District Police Command to quell the quarrel, which led to the grounding of ECG pickup brought to the premises.
The Ashanti Regional Director of GBC, Sam Kwatia, who was not happy about the move, said he considered the presence of the ECG officials at the premises of the state broadcaster as invasion and would like to take a legal action against it.
The Public Relations Officer of ECG in the Ashanti Region, Erasmus Baidoo, said several efforts to retrieve the money failed to yield any positive result.
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