Ghana: Gov’t Directs Parliament To Stay Processes On The Bills Merging VRA, BPA, ECG & NEDCo

The Government of Ghana, through the Minister of State at the Ministry of Energy, Herbert Krapa, has directed Parliament to stay proceedings on the draft Bills seeking to merge the Volta River Authority (VRA), Bui Power Authority (BPA) and Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) into desperate entities.

Minister Krapa revealed this on Thursday after meeting staff groups of VRA, Management and VRA board at the Electro Volta Conference Room in Accra.

In a letter communicating the outcome of the meeting with the Minister, John Chobbah wrote: “The Minister of State indicated that he has engaged the leadership of Parliament to stay the process of laying the proposed merger Bills. He requested the Staff Groups’ leaders to back down on our actions and remove all the RED bands.

“The leadership of the Staff Groups assured the Minister that the staff shall only back down on our actions after an official public announcement from either the Ministry or the Presidency indicating that the Bills have been withdrawn from Parliament. Leadership, however, intimated that the meeting being held must not be interpreted as a stakeholders’ engagement.”

The letter urged all staff to remain resolute and continue working deligently while the leadership press home their demands.

The government’s plan of integrating the power generation assets of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and Bui Power Authority (BPA) are four prong namely: (i)deliver minimised cost of power to consumers,(ii )improve operational efficiency as well as asset integrity and reliability, (iii)enhance financial strength of the integrated entity through the exploration of additional opportunities in the local and regional electricity market and (iv) increase the pace of transition to greener power generation and thereby ensure business.

However, the staff groups of the VRA have expressed opposition tothe proposed merger, arguing that the whole plan is a smoke screen agenda by the government to give off VRA thermal assets and later sell it to cronies.

They maintained that VRA is efficient and wondered why government is seeking to merge it with BPA.

In a thirteen-page petition to the Presidency recently, the Staff Groups of VRA perceived the proposed merger as a deliberate ploy to completely obliterate the name Volta River Authority and the significance of the visionary leader, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who pioneered the establishment of VRA, from the history of Ghana.

Additionally, the Staff Groups said, “We see this merger as a measure to weaken the Authority and the stability of electricity pricing in Ghana.”

According to the Staff Groups, the VRA hydro plants, since their inception, have been efficient with an average availability factor of 95 per cent, a reliability factor of 98 per cent and above year-on-year and a forced outage rate of less than one per cent, thereby making the VRA hydro generation plants one of the top most performing plants among 350 hydro plants in the world.

Source: https://energynewsafrica.com