Hasten slowly, PURC
Industrial plants and service industries operate effectively to achieve the bottom line if they have easy access to cheap water and electricity.
If the cost of electricity and water is high, it adds to the cost of doing business and the cost of products and services become prohibitive and beyond the pockets of many people.
Our governments spare no effort at providing these utilities at very affordable prices, especially when initial investment in these projects is quite high and capital intensive.
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Also, in most jurisdictions, the state has virtual monopoly over power and water distribution to consumers.
In the case of Ghana, the government has taken advantage of the big water bodies to construct dams for the generation of power and the production of potable water.
Every river in the country also has a water system to produce potable water for the people throughout the country.
However, due to economic challenges, some of the systems for the supply of water and power are unable to meet the demands of the country.
Amidst pressure from our donor partners, our governments have been asked to adopt the cost-recovery policy in the management of the utilities.
These partners forget that although it is good to recover cost, we do not have in place a system to cushion the pain of prohibitive tariffs on ordinary workers in a system where there are no safety nets.
Today, even in the so-called capitalist system, governments practise the welfare system that puts in place pro-poor policies to cater for the vulnerable in society.
We need realistic tariffs that will enable the systems to run efficiently, but this should not be at the expense of the poor.
Therefore, the announcement by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) that it had reached consensus with stakeholders for an upward adjustment in electricity tariffs might not have come as a surprise.
This is because the PURC has, for some time now, gone round the entire country engaging key players on whether to increase or not increase tariffs. In all those engagements, the central theme or the concern of stakeholders was the poor quality of service and the non-availability of the products whose prices the utility providers are seeking authorisation to adjust.
There is no doubt that the utility companies — the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) and the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) — require adequate resources to sustain their operations and, in fact, meet the demands of their clients.
We recall with nostalgia the good old days when public standpipes served the communities with water at all times.
We may ask the GWCL to tell us what has happened to those standpipes that were the rendezvous for gossips, friendship and public brawls.
But as we have stated in these columns before, if the services of the utility companies will improve with tariff increases, we are all for it.
The Daily Graphic hopes that the PURC will factor all these issues into the final decision before unleashing any unwarranted headache on consumers.
The difficulties on the ordinary man are great and we, therefore, do not expect any decision that will worsen an already bad situation.
Daily Graphic/Ghana
