Some staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) remain unconvinced that their jobs remain secure as the process to choose a concessionaire moves on.

Under the Millennium Challenge Compact II, the focus is the ECG financial and turnaround project to improve the efficiency of the power distributor.

The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) is going through a list of companies that have bid for the project. There has been disquiet among some ECG staff about the path government seeks to take to make ECG more efficient.

At the recent May Day celebration, the President assured the workers their jobs remain secured saying that the power distribution company will not be privatised.

But some of the ECG workers remain unconvinced. There was a major meeting Tuesday, of the staff to review their options as the deadline for announcing who gets the concessionaire job draws near.

Deputy General Secretary of the Public Utilities Workers Union, Michael Nyantekyi questions why government will not do for ECG now what it is prepared to do for a concessionaire if they come on board. 

He said it is not the issue of whether they doubt what the President said during the May Day celebration, but the current arrangement as it stands has a lot of gaps considering the President said no one will lose their job.

However, Mr. Nyantekyi said, "the cabinet decision is that the concessionaire should refrain from declaring any staff redundancy within the first five years," while asking, "so the issue is what happens after the first five years?"

Furthermore, the Union wants to know what the other details to protect workers interest are, although he disclosed they met with the sector minister as well MiDA both of whom he said have failed to give them the details they are requesting for.

"MiDA said the details will be looked at when the draft request for proposals are prepared," yet Mr. Nyantekyi claims this has already been issued out and is going through the process without those guarantees the Union was expecting to see; that  no staff will be laid off.

The Deputy General Secretary said it begs the question for the whole issue to be reduced to staff being laid off and redundancy. 

According to him, the study conducted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is the consultancy advising MiDA, stated that the ECG is not overstaffed so the redundancy argument is moot. 

Also, he clarified the issue of overstaffing and redundancy using the new prepaid metres as an example saying, for the sake of efficiency and  monitoring the ECG needs more hands to ensure that because people are not going around reading meters and distributing bills, the system must not be short-changed. 

However, Deputy Minister of Power, Mr. John Jinapor said government is trying to avoid the situation where the concessionaire comes in and start firing people thus government is ensuring that for the first five years, whoever comes cannot fire anyone. 

"We expect that within that five years there will be more retraining and realignment...we do not anticipate any layoffs," Mr. Jinapor said.

Mr. Nyantekyi said the Union's problem is the option which the government has chosen, adding that, "we think that there are better alternatives that should be explored which will inure better to the benefits of Ghana and Ghanaians."

He said under a World Bank project together with the Power Ministry, it was decided that ECG should embark on a pilot project called the Strategic Business Operation where a region is looked at as a semi-autonomous entity while drawing a number of things to do to improve efficiency and profitability.  

According to Mr. Nyantekyi, this project started only last December in the Ashanti Region thus their question, "why not allow this pilot opportunity for us to see what it would bring for us to do an appraisal before deciding to bring in the private operator if it fails?"

The Union also wants to know why Government has made some support promises to the concessionaire when that support can be given to ECG to make it better. 

Mr. Jinapor said government has done a lot for ECG in making the company responsive to the needs of Ghanaians.  

"It is not a penal measure, we don't intend to penalize the staff, but rather improve on them...Parliament approved the concessionaire option," said Mr. Jinapor. 

The Deputy Power Minister said a final determination will be reached by the end of this year and the concession itself will kick in from next year.