Staff of the Volta River Authority, Inchaban-Aboadze yesterday staged a protest against the sale of VRA to a private entity.
Vice Chairman of the Western branch of the Senior Staff Association of VRA, Ing. James Adotey emphasized that Parliament’s failure to withdraw the draft bill regarding the sale calls for the demonstration.
According to him, VRA offers the lowest price on the market, and it is efficient, which shouldn’t be sold to any entity.
The government this year laid a bill which seeks to merge VRA with Bui Power Authority, combine the Electricity of Ghana, ECG with the Northern Electricity Distribution Company, NEDCO and establish an independent Thermal Power Authority.
“Yesterday, the proceedings of parliament revealed that the bill has not been withdrawn which we didn’t take lightly because it is it’s that wasn’t what he agreed with us. So that is why as I said, we demonstrate the check against our disclosure and the bill in parliament. For us, we are just dealing with the government which is a really political party,”
Whether it’s party or party b, we don’t care. We are sending a signal very clear to all NDC, NDC, or other governments that may be in power but currently, the NPP government is. We think VRA is efficient and we’ve been running efficiently. Currently, our tariffs, and power prices for VRA are the cheapest in the country. These are facts and they can be verified.
We saw the cheapest power. Moreover, we are the only power generator in this country that is being paid in the city. All the rest are paid in dollars. Apart from that, we, VRA or the Thermal assets, we think are very efficient, will be running efficiently, and will be declaring profit consistently. So their basis for trying to segregate and sell some aspect of the thermal assets of VRA to private people, we don’t agree,”He stated.
Ing. Adotey however, highlighted the consequences such actions by the government may incur should such plans be implemented.
He said, “Energy is a national asset and a national security energy is a national security thing. So you cannot give all your thermal assets to private people. It will not be in the interest of the people of Ghana and we believe this will also lead to an increase in tariffs. That is why we are kicking against and we think it is not right. So it is not politically biased. Not at all.
We are professionals and we believe in what we do. We don’t work based on political colors. Currently, as we speak, people losing their jobs have not come to the table for discussion. What we seek to address now is that the merger is not in the good interest of Ghana, and the workers of VRA,”
Ing. Adotey continued that, “There is nothing like losing our jobs as we speak but we may get to that later on. As I said, it is not just to protect our interest but to protect the interest of the people of Ghana.
We are very efficient. If you look at, the current thermal plant at, Kumasi. This plant was dismantled from Aboadze and was built, and re-installed by VRA engineers. This shows that you have very capable engineers, efficient engineers. So we’re saying that it is not in our interest. So it is not into the stage of what we’re thinking about we losing our job, but we can’t rule that out as well. It may come to that.
