The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned government and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to reverse recent hikes in utilities or face its wrath.

In a strongly worded statement, the TUC maintained that the cedi's exchange rate gains should have been incorporated into the recent pricing formula to reflect a reduction instead of an increase.

TUC Secretary General, Kofi Asamoah, told Joy News' Francis Abban Friday that over 500,000 members of the workers' union are very likely to resist the new hikes.

The TUC champions trade union activities of eighteen national workers' unions.

The Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission reviewed electricity and water tariffs upwards earlier this week through the Automatic Adjustment Formula (AAF).

The recent price hikes have been met with public outcry.

Cost of electricity went up by 6.54 percent while that of water increased by 4.54 percent.

However, the new cost for water will not take effect because the PURC says it is still waiting for the distributors to meet certain regulatory requirements.

The TUC General Secretary said the timing for the utility price hikes was bad.

"We are asking the PURC to as quickly as possible reverse [the new rates]", Kofi Asamoah said.

He revealed that the union had been meeting on what action to take, assuring that the public would soon be made aware of what decision the TUC has taken.

But Public Affairs Director of the PURC, Nana Yaa Gyantuah, said she was surprised by the TUC's reaction.

"TUC was one of the key stakeholders that said that we (PURC) should implement the Automatic Adjustment Formula and stick to it religiously", she said.

PURC's AAF makes use of cedi-dollar exchange rate, inflation, price of crude oil and natural gas, fuel prices among other factors to determine prices.

Although the price of crude and the cedi-dollar exchange rates are currently favourable, PURC says these were not captured because figures of these factors were not good at the time it had to adjust the price of utilities.