Vice President John Dramani Mahama has decried the erratic services being provided by utility services in the country in recent times. Such poor services, he said, makes arguments for adjustments of utility tariffs needless and unsustainable. “Often before we increase tariffs we promise that services will improve and so the public is carried along with us. We do the tariff increases and they don’t see significant improvement in service. “I speak the voice of the people in emphasizing that we need to set performance targets and make sure that we can have reliable supplies of utility so that tomorrow when you go back to the people and ask them for increases in tariffs they will come along with you. “Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case,” John Mahama noted in a meeting with officials of the service providers in the country. He convened the meeting on Tuesday to lament the near to crisis situation many Ghanaians are going through with utility services. It is the second time this year the presidency has queried the utility services for poor conditions of service. “The public is not in the mood. They are not happy about the performance. I have seen it myself. When I go to visit friends or even sitting in my own house in Dzorwulu sometimes the lights go off. “And it’s not even that the lights go off; fine let them go off. But they go off; they come on; they go off; they come on; before you see, your equipment is broken down,” he said. “…If we have challenges why is it difficult for us to just give the public the courtesy of informing them that this is what is happening. The least we could do is to send the public van into that area and announce to them your lights are going to be off for 72 hours…,” he said. He charged them to set targets for themselves and challenged them to achieve those targets or hold themselves responsible if they are unable to. Officials of the various utility services accepted the criticisms and apologized to Ghanaians. Head of the Electricity Company of Ghana, Cephas Gapko, pleaded for patience from the public saying there is light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dim the tunnel appears to be at the moment. The Gridco boss, Charles Darko promised to work assiduously to improve upon the situation. Story by Nathan Gadugah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana