Member of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament, Edward Abambire Bawa says the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has not been transparent when it comes to revenue collection and payments.

According to him, the ECG was forced to subject itself to the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM) because of its inability to account for the power it sells.

Speaking on Newsfile on Saturday, March 23, Mr Bawa stressed that ECG's revenues cannot settle all its bills, prompting the implementation of the Cash Waterfall Mechanism.

“And the reason why they had to bring PURC in is that even though this is a mechanism that came from 2017, a lot of the players - particularly the IPPs said that there was no transparency in the way it was being administered.

“....ECG is simply not transparent and so I’m not surprised PURC is insisting on that law. If you say that you used part of your money in procurement, let us see whether you have a directive from the state (the Ministry of Energy or Ministry of Finance), that use part of your revenue that you have gotten in procuring fuel.

“Let’s see the fuel contract that you signed with those who were supposed to supply the fuel and the invoices that were there, tell us what the quantities were,” he said.

The Member of the Mines and Energy Committee in Parliament argued that a state institution like ECG should have this data available in their offices across the country, adding that their failure to provide it is quite problematic.

His comment comes after the PURC said the ECG acted irresponsibly when it used part of the money accrued under the Cash Waterfall Mechanism to purchase fuel to generate power.

The decision, which left the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) cashless under the mechanism between November 2023 and January 2024, is said to be impacting negatively on the operational capacity of the two entities.

Read also: ECG acted irresponsibly in using money from cash waterfall mechanism to purchase fuel – PURC

The PURC has since issued a one-week ultimatum to ECG to respond to a set of demands and warned that it may resort to sanctions if the demands are not met.

Director of Regional Operations and Consumer Services with the Commission, Alhaji Jabaru Abubakar said that the ECG cannot operate on their own terms.

On the back of this, Mr Bawa stressed that the deadlock between the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) is nothing more than "indiscipline."

He stated that ECG had failed to furnish prescribed reports and documents to PricewaterhouseCoopers (Ghana) Ltd (PwC).

The document, he said was necessary to facilitate PwC’s analysis and subsequent submission of a final audit report to PURC aimed at validating ECG’s revenue collections and payments in accordance with the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM) guidelines.