"Elizabeth Ohene writes : Why is paying for power so painful?"

" Elizabeth Ohene writes: Why is paying for power so painful? \r\n\r\nI have been trying, so far without success, to understand what the issue is with us Ghanaians and electricity.\r\n\r\nWe like electricity, we just know we cannot do without electricity, we believe we deserve to have electricity and we do not want any interruptions in the supply of electricity.\r\n\r\nIndeed, we rate the availability of electricity so high that unreliable electricity supply can cost an election. Just ask a certain John Dramani Mahama. He heard us so loud and clear that he tried to get us electricity supply, no matter the cost. The word on the street was just give us the power.\r\n\r\n Programme \r\nIt is against this background that I am watching, like the rest of the country, the drama unfolding with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Revenue Mobilisation Programme.\r\n\r\nThis programme is the phenomenon whereby the electricity company announced the closure of all their offices to enable them to go round, house to house, office to office, factory to factory, structure to structure and collect monies owed to the company.\r\n\r\nAccording to the Managing Director of the company, Samuel Dubik Mahama, between September 2022 and February 2023 alone, an amount of about GH\u00a2 5 billion had accrued in outstanding debts, mostly owed by state institutions.\r\n\r\nThe company had apparently employed every known method to try and get us, their customers, to pay our bills and had failed.\r\n\r\nThey had therefore resorted to this totally unorthodox method of shutting their offices and turning every ECG employee, from the Managing Director to the lowest ranked officer, into a debt collector.\r\n\r\nIt was going to be a very public, very loud, very in-your-face operation, where they would not only disconnect you from the grid, but announce to the whole world how much you owed.\r\n\r\nWhen the exercise started, they went to the high-end, big-name customers first, probably chosen to demonstrate that there were no untouchables.\r\n\r\nThe Parliament of Ghana scrambled to find money to pay part of the shocking debt they owed, the oil refinery was disconnected, the Kotoka International Airport, our pride and joy, was disconnected, probably the current number one leading businessman in the country, said to be highly connected, had his business outfit disconnected.\r\n\r\nPrivate people went to queue to pay their electricity bills and businesses suddenly found money to pay bills that had been outstanding for years.\r\n\r\nIt became obvious that everyone and everything owed ECG.\r\n\r\n Impression \r\nOne got the clear impression that paying of electricity bills did not rank very high on the list of our priorities. If you could avoid paying for electricity, you did and it is the last obligation you found money to discharge.\r\n\r\nIt is considered disgraceful to be indebted but it is okay to owe the power company. We frown upon stealing and defrauding, but it is okay to steal power.\r\n\r\nYou can be part of the great and the good in our society, have something to say on immorality and dishonesty in our public and private lives; if you can find a way of using power without the power company knowing about it, you do.\r\n\r\nSome neighbourhoods pride themselves on being no-go areas for ECG meter readers and bill collectors; they simply don\u2019t pay for electricity.\r\n\r\nOnce the exercise got underway, it soon became clear that the illegal connection phenomenon was more widespread than anyone had imagined.\r\n\r\n Conversation \r\nAt this stage, a conversation took place on one of the WhatsApp groups I belong to that I will reproduce here with the permission and apologies to my friends in the group:\r\n\r\nFriend Number One: Hopefully, they won\u2019t find and disconnect a Church or Mosque for an illegal connection.\r\n\r\nFriend Number Two: The way these ECG people are charged, anything is possible.\r\n\r\nFriend Number Three: And so what, if they disconnect a church or a mosque for non-payment or illegal connection.\r\n\r\nThey should disconnect all of them.\r\n\r\nChurch, mosque, whatever, they must all pay, who do they want to be charged extra to cover their usage, if they don\u2019t pay, they don\u2019t get light, that is all.\r\n\r\nThen it happened.\r\n\r\nAn illegal connection was discovered at a police barracks.\r\n\r\nYou can read that backwards and slowly and as fast as you want; an illegal connection was discovered at a police barracks and they were disconnected.\r\n\r\nThen an illegal connection was discovered at a Catholic church and they were disconnected.\r\n\r\nWhen the Managing Director of ECG told the world that he was receiving calls from lots of big men urging him to stop the exercise, I said a prayer for him.\r\n\r\n Question \r\nSo, I have been asking myself this question, what is it that we, as a people, have against paying for electricity?\r\n\r\nThinking along these lines takes me back to an incident a long time ago, in one of my earlier, other lives, when I interviewed a young man in Freetown, Sierra Leone.\r\n\r\nHe was of the very firm conviction that water should not be paid for, no matter how much the water company might have spent to pipe it into your house or to the pipe stand or in purifying the polluted water to make it fit for drinking.\r\n\r\nWater, according to this young man, is like air and free from God and should not be paid for.\r\n\r\nHe was therefore trying to organise the people of Freetown not to pay for treated, piped water.\r\n\r\nNeedless to say my articulate, persuasive young man did not get very far with his campaign\r\n\r\nI have not heard anyone try to argue that electricity is from God and should therefore be free.\r\n\r\nSo, why are we so unwilling to pay for something we all crave so much?\r\n\r\nWhy do we not prioritise the paying of electricity bills?\r\n\r\nWhy do we not regard it as something to be ashamed of that someone has accumulated electricity bills?\r\n\r\nWhy does Parliament find money to do everything else but not to pay its electricity bills?\r\n\r\nAnd Mr Samuel Dubik Mahama, I am told that all the illegal connections and fiddling with bills and meters that cost the ECG so much money is only possible because your staff lead and show the way.\r\n\r\nWould you consider another exercise in which you will smoke out those within the ECG who aid us the customers to steal electricity?\r\n\r\nBelieve me, your task is easy.\r\n\r\nThis business of people calling to ask you to stop the exercise is pure bluff.\r\n\r\nThere is nobody in this town who would rather have DUMSOR.\r\n\r\nWe are all cheering you on secretly.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n "

"Elizabeth Ohene writes : Why is paying for power so painful?"

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