TOWARDS BETTER SERVICE DELIVERY (JUNE 2, 2010)

THE Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) last Monday announced increases in tariffs for electricity and water, effective this month.
Under the new scheme, the cost for the use of electricity has risen by 89 per cent at the upper limit, while that for water is up by 32 per cent.
It is important to note that these increases have come from a background of demands from the utility companies, principally the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), for increases ranging from 120 per cent to 136 per cent.
The basis for this demand by the utility companies for tariff hikes is that for some years now they have not been given tariff increases to keep pace with increasing cost of generating, transmitting and distributing power and water.
It has particularly been argued that the depreciation in the value of the cedi over the last three years, until recently, has created a situation where the companies are unable to recover loss, leading to significant levels of indebtedness and, therefore, their inability to deliver good services.
We are not oblivious of the implications of these hikes on consumers who, in the face of these increases, will have to pay more for the use of power and water. This, in turn, will eat more into their incomes, in the face of other pressing demands.
While we sympathise with these legitimate concerns, we believe, like so many others, that an increase in tariffs has become inevitable, not only to recover costs but also make funds available for retooling and investment in modern equipment decisive for improvement in service delivery.
While some may argue, with some justification, that improved service delivery must come before increases in tariffs, the truth of our situation is that not much by way of improvement in service delivery can be secured with the present array of bottlenecks afflicting the utility companies.
Given that development, it is better to accept to pay more and then secure a binding commitment from the utility companies to, within a stated period, show practical evidence of improvement in service delivery.
With this, the utility companies will have no valid excuse or pretext for not delivering to public expectation. Rather, they will be under a clear obligation to accelerate the tempo of their performance to meet this objective.
Additionally, this situation can result in closer monitoring and enforcement of better performance benchmarks on a more regular and sustained basis so that the utility companies could constantly be put on the spotlight regarding their performance so that shortcomings will be shown and the requisite steps taken to remedy them.
We wish to take this opportunity to call for an effective partnership among consumers, the PURC and the utility companies to help push this positive agenda of improving service delivery.
We also wish to alert the utility companies to the fact that the public and consumers, for that matter, will no longer accept excuses for poor quality service and that those unproductive attitudes to work that engendered the inefficiencies in their operations should be done away with so that they can deliver to public expectation.
This is the time for the VRA, the ECG and the GWCL to deliver quality service to consumers to justify the PURC’s tariff hikes, difficult as they may be for both the PURC and consumers