“Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.”― James Russell Lowell The ongoing energy crisis has shown kinks in our energy policies and our inability to emerge from the crisis as winners. Lessons from our earlier crises were supposed to have helped us develop a built-to-last and sustainable energy policy for the country. We have left power generation in this country to variables beyond our control. Whether it is rain fed electricity or West Africa Gas Pipeline there are certain risks which are outside our control. Past experience should have informed us to have a contingency plan should there be any problem be it draught, as happened in 2006/7 or political or pricing issues with the pipeline. At the beginning of the year, the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDco) announced that a generational shortfall of about 200MW has necessitated the need for load shedding exercise across the length and breadth of the country. The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the supplier of electricity to consumers is tasked to implement the load shedding exercise. This is not the first time the nation has gone through this type of crisis. For some obscure reason, the ECG has taken a detour from the way it managed the past crises. Though the ECG came out with a time table for the load shedding, it now says that they are not going by the schedule. To the ECG, both the erratic power supply from its suppliers - VRA and GRIDco and the increasing demand from consumers, make it impossible for them to abide by the schedule. To be honest, I find the excuses broached by the ECG to be highly preposterous. Whilst consumers of electricity in the country do not expect the ECG to give what the ECG does not have at this crisis mode, consumers do expect them to show some degree of respect and professionalism in the discharge of their duty. The hypothetical question is that if the ECG, GRIDco and VRA were the distributors, transmitters and producers respectively of electricity for cities like London, New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Chicago, would they have followed this crude approach in managing the crisis? I am very sure that they would have done something more professional than this. They would know that consumers of electricity need to be respected. They would have followed international best practices in dealing with this situation. Mediocrity and poor service delivery have become the standard in this country. Providers have taken consumers for granted, while the PURC stands aloof, unable or unwilling to crack the whip. In the past, whenever there was a load shedding program, consumers-both commercial and residential users could plan their business and lives based on the time table provided by the ECG and its VRA suppliers. Today, most Ghanaians cannot plan and optimize the limited power available because the light goes off at will and whim. I have also met people who say that they have no expectation that their lights would be on. So whenever the light goes out, it does not offend them. I met a lady whose business has been brought to its knees by the manner in which the ECG is handling the crisis. I am very sure if a class action suit was to be brought against the ECG and its partners, thousands of people would join in. The action of the ECG is causing businesses to lose revenue. And whenever businesses lose revenue, there will be a shortfall in government revenue. What are the consequences of this? We do not expect the ECG to turn on power 24/7. We would rather prefer to have scheduled 12 hours of electricity in every 24 hours than 18 hours of electricity dotted with intermittent outages. If businesses that cannot afford to buy a heavy duty plant can know of when the lights would be on, they can reconfigure their working schedule to allow workers go to work only when there is light. Businesses do not have this information and as such they are unable to make good decisions. Last week I was an industrial hub in Tema and found out most of the workers sitting down and playing cards simply because there was no electricity. The story is true for ten and thousands of companies in the country. Companies are unable to produce anything whenever the light goes off and at the end of the month they must find money somewhere to pay their workers and pay the incompetent ECG as well. Basic accounting principle will tell you that these companies would run at loss. THE WAY FORWARD The ECG does not need a rocket scientist to help them manage the energy crisis. If the ECG could go back to its 2006/7 operational manual, I am sure that it can do better than what it is doing now. Is it because management has changed hands at the ECG? I do not want to be tempted to believe so. I do not pretend to be an energy expert like Dr.Charles Wireko Brobbey to be able to advice the ECG on the way forward. However, it is obvious this is a leadership and management problem that can be solved with time tested management principles. This takes the problem from the field of physics and chemistry to the field of management. By management we know that resources are limited and the goal of every resources allocation leader is to optimize the limited resources available. For the past weeks, the ECG has shown that it lacks the principles in managing the crisis. I would like to suggest that the ECG, GRIDco and VRA should sit down together. The Adam-Eve-Serpent blame is unnecessary. VRA should tell GRIDco: what is the maximum amount of power it can produce? What is the minimum? So they know the two scenarios: best case and worst case. Factoring in power loss through transmissions, the GRIDco on the other hand can also tell ECG its maximum and minimum projection. For ECG not to operate below the expectation of consumers, it must use the minimum power (worst case scenario) to design its load shedding exercise. This is neither quantum physics nor rocket science. This is a common management technique. If the ECG cannot follow this simple technique to wire its load shedding time-table then I may be tempted to believe that there is something they are hiding from the public. The writer is public policy analyst and management consultant. He can be contacted through: appiahkusi@gmail.com