Spare us these tariff adjustments for now!

Access to water and the efficient supply of electricity are key drivers of any country’s economic endeavours.

Ghana abounds in many water bodies, including the Volta River, which is the third largest in West Africa, but a sizeable portion of the population is without water.

Raw or fresh water is not a problem, except that in recent times the activities of illegal gold miners, otherwise referred to as galamsey perators, have polluted the water bodies.

When it comes to the availability of potable water, there is a challenge, as the state is unable to support its provision in the right amounts to reach all segments of society.

Although the entire country is yet to be hooked onto the national grid, majority of the people have access to electricity, thanks to the rural electrification project embarked upon by the government in the 1980s.

Even with the expansion in the coverage of these two utilities, customers of power and water producers are dissatisfied with the services that are provided.

Poor investments in these two critical sectors of the economy can also account for the poor services that the utility companies are extending to their customers.

Plant and equipment of these utility companies are obsolete, while scheduled maintenance is always behind schedule because of lack of funds. Indeed, the ongoing load-shedding exercise is partly attributed to delayed planned maintenance.

The utility companies have come under severe criticism for their poor services and customers have always been up in arms against upward adjustments in tariffs.

We recall the agitation that greeted the upward adjustment earlier in the year, for which organised labour threatened to embark on an industrial action.

The difficult negotiations that occasioned the agitation led to a reduction in the tariffs.

For quite some time now the services provided by the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) have not met the expectations of customers.

The taps are always running dry, while power supply is disrupted without recourse to customers.

The ECG has to be compelled to publish the timetable for the ongoing load-shedding exercise, a development that tells us clearly the contempt with which the power producers have been treating Ghanaians.

The utility providers have always cited low tariffs as the reason for their poor services, but anytime the tariffs are increased, consumers do not see any improvement in services.

The companies have also blamed their poor services on illegal connections and huge government indebtedness, but it is difficult to appreciate why these inefficiencies are passed on to consumers.

It is for this reason that the Daily Graphic finds it very difficult to accept the revised upward adjustment in utility tariffs for the fourth quarter of 2014 by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC) by 6.54 per cent for power and 4.54 per cent for water.

The PURC added, however, that because of the poor quality of water service, it “has decided not to pass on the tariff for water until such a time that certain regulatory requirements that protect the consumer are met”.

We hear the justification for the increase in power tariffs very loud and clear but we beg to differ from the rationalisation offered by the PURC.

The Daily Graphic insists that the services offered by the ECG and the GWCL are of such poor quality that the upward adjustments are simply unacceptable.