A Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, Edward Abambire Bawa, has disclosed that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is running 61 accounts against President Akufo-Addo and the IMF’s directive to run just one account.
The ECG, according to Mr. Bawa, failed to grant access to PricewaterhouseCoopers to audit their accounts when the auditing firm were tasked to do so. This, the Bongo Member of Parliament says, was due to about 37 accounts they suspected the Company was running in contravention to the directive of the President and the IMF.
However, upon the ECG’s own report given to the PURC, the Company, instead of the suspected 37, were running 61 accounts. He made the revelation whilst speaking on TV3’s KeyPoints Saturday, April 20, 2024.
“By the IMF conditionality given to us, –because they have identified the energy sector as one of the greatest threats to our economy in terms of the level of indebtedness –had indicated that [the ECG should] have a single account such that anytime you take the revenues, we can follow the account in which these monies are put in.
“The President subsequently gives an order that, run a single account. When Price WaterhouseCoopers was contracted to audit the cash waterfall mechanism and the activities of the ECG, one of the things they did was that, they refused to make their bank account available to the auditor and it was one of the concerns that we raised. At that time, we thought that they were running around 37 accounts.
“Per the documents that they have presented by the ECG itself to the PURC, they were not running 37, they are running 61 accounts. That again is a clear violation of the directive of the president, the directive that has been given to us by the IMF and in fact the whole idea of the cash waterfall mechanism. On the strength of that, what business does the board still have to be in the position? So, I agree that you may not be able to surcharge them per the law, but morally, they should not be occupying that office,” he revealed.
The ECG and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) have been having issues recently regarding an ongoing load-shedding which is known locally as ‘dumsor’. The Commission, whose responsibility it is, to seek the interest of consumers in ensuring that they given the best of services by public utilities, asked the Company to provide a timetable to guide the public on their dumsor schedule.
But, the ECG refused, indicating that the power outages were as a result of some planned maintenance which occurred as a result of some faulty transformers that were being replaced. The PURC fined the Board of Directors of the ECG GHC5.8million for failing to provide the timetable. Meanwhile, the Board says the fine is illegal since the PURC does not weird that mandate to fine it.
