THE government has taken a major step towards solving the energy challenges of the country with the cutting of the sod for work to begin on the expansion of the Takoradi Thermal Power Plant at Aboadze in the Shama District of the Western Region.
Presently, the country has an installed generation capacity of about 2,000MW, while the peak demand for power is estimated at 1,350MW.
Cutting the sod, the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, said the vision of the government was to provide adequate and reliable energy supplies for all sectors of the economy to support socio-economic development, poverty reduction and also for export.
Not too long ago, Ghana exported power to Togo and Benin as part of efforts to deepen South-South co-operation and regional integration.
Somehow, the country lost this opportunity of generating excess power for export and had to rely on Cote d’Ivoire for power during peak consumption periods.
A number of factors accounted for this challenge, key among them being the country’s inability to renew the plant and equipment at the Akosombo and the Kpong generation plants, as well as a drop in the water level in the Akosombo Dam.
Furthermore, the lack of consensus on the payment of what has become known as realistic tariffs affected the capacity of the energy companies to provide adequate energy and efficient power.
Long debates, and in some cases street agitation by a section of consumers, have always greeted upward adjustments in tariffs and those against the adjustments have always cited the inability of consumers to pay the tariffs as justification.
But for how long can we continue with these argument of our inability to pay and at the same time expect efficient delivery of services by the utility companies?
With the provision of prepaid meters in most residential areas and emerging communities, the utility companies are reducing the burden of having to chase consumers to pay their bills.
However, the effort at getting every consumer to pay realistic tariffs for electricity has been hampered by the purchasing power of consumers in compound houses.
And because the tariffs are based on the amount of power consumed, residents of compound houses tend to consume more. They thus pay more because they do not have individual meters.
The government tried going around this problem with the institution of lifeline tariffs but that policy has been defeated by the lack of more meters in compound houses.
Those who have argued against upward adjustments in tariffs have always cited the waste in the system to back their position, although it is generally accepted that the country cannot expect to update its generation mix with the present low level of tariffs.
The Daily Graphic believes that Ghana can be an attractive business destination only if the cost of doing business is competitive and we can achieve that in total if utility tariffs are competitive and service delivery is efficient.
The Daily Graphic has no doubt that consumers will be prepared to pay competitive tariffs provided they are assured of reliable and adequate power.
We, therefore, call on the utility companies to put their act together and remove all the bottlenecks hindering efficient supply of power so that the right energy mix will be made available for national development.
The Daily Graphic thinks that the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) ought to develop more teeth to compel the utility companies to discharge their obligations to the satisfaction of consumers.
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