"Don’t bite the hand the feeds you” is the latest idiom from my early years whose full import was just about to hit me smack in the teeth as I sat down to pen this week’s Tarzan’s epistle to mother Ghana ( non-denominational please).  For nearly three years now, I have been salting away my pension loot helping many Ghanaians living everywhere to overcome the iniquities of very unstable and fluctuating and frequently unavailable power supply from the utility companies.

Indeed.  I have to pen this essay with the assistance of one of my pension-generating props as I have been without power for nearly 12 hours) Adjei Larbi’s press release said normal business would be restored by 2200 hours on Friday, but as at 0700 hours on Saturday, I was till dependent on my pension prop, and gotten fuel for my generator,. (In the end, it lasted 20 hours

As soon as my soccer- mad mate Catherine(aka Kate) screamed “Wooow! After an 80% increase”, I knew my pension loot was safe for a few more years. So it is that even before the usual suspects have finished their “we cannot afford” choruses, the answer to my second COMPARED TO WHAT question has ‘leaked’ unexpectedly (ala GWCL’s freely flowing, never fixed burst water mains).

WE HAVE BEEN HAD. THE PROMISE OF BETTER QUALITY SERVICE HAS BEEN BROKEN EVEN BEFORE WE CAN RECHARGE OUR PREPAID CARDS.  THE QUALITY OF GHANA’S UTILITY SERVICES IS VERY STRAINED.  AND ALL OF THIS SOON AFTER 80% & 52% PRICE INCREASES   

On every comparable scale of measure, the QUALITY OF THE SERVICES(QoS) provided to us by VRA, TAPCO, ASOGLI GRIDCO, ECG, NED, GWCL, CWSD sits on the bottom rung of both the African and Global ladders of good performance. Whether it is availability, reliability, stability, or any other...lity of QoS measurement, Ghanains are getting the rawest of bad deals from our utility service providers.  Our sores are almost as painful as those of our sister nation Nigeria, except that our service providers are more efficient at telling us when they will not deliver services (“Load Shedding Schedules” they call it )  

Do Ghanaians know that there are laws which say that ECG and NED should deliver power at our premises at voltages of 230V +/- 10 %.( 207 – 253V).Yet we have measured voltages as low as 80V and as high as 350V on our props. These same laws tell us how many times our electricity services can be interrupted over a 24 hour period, for how long and the total in one year

The Energy Commission is the standard setter for the quality of service in the electricity sector. In 2008, it issued LI 1935, putting down the standards of performance for electricity supply in Ghana. Let me share some of this with you as long as you promise not to laugh “Interruption of supply: 4.(1)A supplier of electricity shall ensure that the cumulative electricity interruption for each customer within an operational year does not exceed  (a)forty-eight hours, in             a metropolitan or municipal area, or industrial estate; …….. (2)Despite sub regulation (1) the supplier shall ensure that the electricity interruption to a customer’s premises within an operational year does not exceed six periods.(3) Despite sub regulations (1) and (2) the duration of each outage shall not exceed (a)eight hours, in a metropolitan or municipal area or industrial estate;”

So if we have such clear QoS measures which have been in place for at least five years, why are we still getting such poor quality of electricity supply, especially after the promises repeated ad nausea in August 2010 when the last substantial tariffs adjustments were made (Incidentally bigger than the current levels)

I have suggested that the spate of fires in our markets during the dark days of ‘Dum So Dum So’ in Ghana ( I beg ooh Osagyefo) was due primarily to the very high Surge voltages( circa 500 V) that flowed through  inferior wires and shoddy connections  when power was restored after another  “DUM DUM” episode . My theory is founded on the fact that most of the fires occurred at night when the majority of appliances in the markets were switched off; directing the surge to the nearest shoddy cable/ connection and BOOM, starting the fire.   I am holding fast onto this PHD-qualifying thesis until the Govt. publishes another “hidden” report of investigations it has instigated itself, this time round spending thousands of green bucks to bring in Uncle Sam’s experts.     

When we come to water, the situation is worse. There are no laws. There is no equivalent body to the Energy Commission ( Yes,, there is a Water Commission but who has heard of it at all, let alone expect it to set quality standards). The GWCL cannot account for 50% of the water it produces (no change in the 25 years of my public service). Water flows through the tap (if you are lucky to have it) barely one day in a week. 

The quality of tap water is so bad that everyone is forced to drink treated water; “nofoo” for the masses. 50 different brands of bottled water.  ( When I arrived in Ghana 25 years ago, only imported Perrier bottled water was available, and you can imagine that it was drunk only by those here to assist us to overcome the illnesses contracted from drinking infected and infested water. 

Do you that know that at its current price (really 20pesewas because nobody has 5 pesewas change when you pay your 15 pesewas official price), what we are paying now for a unit of treated piped water,  19 PESEWAS,  will fill 2000 sachets of “nofoo” water? As with candles, the cost of piped water is an absolute pittance when compared to the sachet alternative. ( Maybe I should start a sachet water plant to widen the revenue sources for my pension loot) 

And to add insult to injury, when we spend millions of dollars to import chemicals to make our water nearly fit for the purpose, GWCL watches unconcerned as unscrupulous people make money from using the water to wash the vehicles of the well to do without paying a pesewa for this wanton waste. It is an abomination that we should even allow cars to be washed with treated water when more than half the people of Accra and the rest of Ghana do not have pipe borne water, or no water at ll.    

Can you imagine it. President Mahama had to go to Weija to establish that the breakdown of a simple valve,  whose replacement cost was US$27,000,  was depriving us of more than 3 million gallons of water a day  When the President inquired why the problem had not been fixed, the answer was that a requisition had been sent to HQ several months earlier and zilch had happened.

Naturally, the Directors and assorted wigs of the utility service companies, and their privileged bosses of the Article 71 community, have been provided with millisecond switchover generators and multiple reserve water tanks at their homes, to cushion themselves from the iniquities, destruction and inconvenience that is a direct consequence of their failure to move from the promises to the actualization of their “PAY MORE AND GET BETTER QUALITY” tired and hollow refrain. 

Consumers of all classes don’t like the levels of tariffs that have been announced. However, they are more disappointed about the lack of clear, transparent, measurable numbers and targets on the QUALITY OF SERVICE DELIVERY. In the run up to the announcement of the new tariffs, PURC’s consultative process placed QoS at the top of the pile of consumer worries and expectations, Indeed there was a clear signal that consumers would RESIST ANY APPROVED INCREASES, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE LEVELS, UNLESS they came hand in hand with TANGIBLE QUANTITATIVE INDICATORS OF THE QUALITY OF SERVICE that the utility services will provide for the tariffs approved for them.

 

Now and maybe on the face of the furious public reaction, (more about QoS than price), PURC has decided to take the QOS issue head on. It is demanding the utilities to furnish it with measurable and quantifiable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in line with existing laws and the best practice that pertains elsewhere in the world. As you read this, PURC is engaging representatives of all stakeholders at a talk shop to look at UTILITY TARIFFS & QUALITY OF SERVICE. 

We should be grateful to PURC for its  ‘SANKOFA” act of revisiting and recalibrating their tariff work not to reduce the rates but to listen and produce clear , unambiguous, transparent benchmarks that will tell us in plain numbers whether the utilities are giving us better, reliable and sustained high quality services . It looks to me like PURC has adopted the new goal line technology to make sure that it moves from AWAM to a truly NEUTRAL referee.

 Last Friday Paa Kwesi (who has cut short Doe Adjaho’s brief tenure) met the service providers (whom we own) and user groups (Labour, employers, etc). The focus of the meeting was how to achieve Higher Quality of Service by reducing waste and improving managerial supervision that will translate into affordable (2 Fs) tariffs for reliable and constant supply of utilities.

As for my people calling press conferences to condemn the tariff increases, don’t mind them. It’s silly opportunism lacking sincerity.  I got 200% tariff increases in 2 consecutive years under the Gentle Giant’s stewardship. The people crowing now justified it to the Ghanaian people as necessary and needed to give better services. I had to and kept the lights on when Akosombo was at its lowest recorded level ever to stop consumers from having to switch to candles, batteries and generators. 

My Thanks? Plenty Wahala about SRP ( most still don’t know what these three letters stand for).. Quality Service may sometimes lead to strain. Aha, but that is another tale for another day.

Charles Wereko-Brobby

CHIEF POLICY ANALYST, Ghana Institute for Public Policy Options, GIPPO

Email: tarzan@eyetarzan.org

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