Governance expert and former United Nations Advisor on Governance, Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah, has stated that when institutions fail to meet the needs of citizens, the president must take responsibility and act in favour of the population.
His comments come on the back of the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) failure to comply with a directive from the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) to publish a load management timetable on the ongoing power outages in the country.
Prof. Agyeman-Duah asserted this while contributing to discussions on the intermittent power supply on TV3’s news analysis programme The Key Points on Saturday, March 30.
“In governance, when such situations arise, we look for who is responsible, but ultimately it is the executive, the president who made these appointments to own up to whatever that citizens find to be unacceptable,” said Prof. Agyeman-Duah.
“When you hear key agencies responsible for the energy sector appearing to be contradicting themselves or not being even with the people, that is to say, lacking transparency on what really is going on, then in terms of governance, we all begin to wonder whether the centre can no longer hold,” he added.
The ECG, in response to the publication of a load management timetable order from the regulator, explained in a letter dated March 27, 2024, that it published planned maintenance works at various operational areas to inform customers about interruptions in power supply.
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However, the former United Nations advisor on governance maintained that the buck should stop with the president. He stressed that the president should have convened a meeting with the two agencies to understand the situation and direct the next line of action.
“I am aware of the PURC’s request for the ECG to give a [load management] timetable and the ECG’s own response that it should be GRIDCo, so they are all passing the buck, and ultimately the buck should stop on the president’s desk,” said Prof. Agyeman-Duah, adding, “By now I want to believe that the president should have called all these agencies together and give them the marching orders to ensure that the sector is stabilise.”
Meanwhile, the power distributor, ECG indicated that it has stable power supply in the country.
In a statement yesterday [March 29], ECG maintained that those areas that might be facing erratic power supply (Dumsor), could be the result of a “localised fault.”
