Revamp Aboso glass factory to develop renewable energy equipment - CSOs charge political parties

Political parties should consider seriously the need to revamp the Aboso Glass Factory as a first step to developing local capacity to build the county's renewable energy equipment.

These equipment include solar panels and wind farms.

The call was made by 11 civil society organisations (CSOs) in Accra last Tuesday.

This was during a post-manifesto engagement with political parties - the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the Movement for Change.

The CSOs are KASA Ghana Initiative, Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas, Strategic youth network for development, Natural resource governance institute, Centre for extractives and Africa Development, Ghana Integrity Initiative, Ghana anti-corruption Coalition, ⁠Institute for Energy Security, Renewable Energy Association of Ghana, Arocha Ghana and Ecocare Ghana.

Proposals

The CSOs had earlier, in Senchi, in June this year, made some proposals to the parties for consideration in their manifestos, and the engagement was to look at the extent to which their proposals had been captured.

The areas for consideration were energy transition, upstream and downstream petroleum, oil and gas, environmental and climate change, and corruption.

In a presentation, the Senior Africa Programme Officer of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Denis M. Gyeyir, said the CSOs had tracked the manifestos of the parties and seen what and what they had picked on.

"We don't assume we understand everything in your manifesto and so we would want to have the opportunity to understand further what thinking went into it and if there are any gaps, we would then also probably make those proposals," he said.

Energy transition

On energy transition, he said, the organisations made some pragmatic approaches, particularly around issues of finance and the role of gas in the transition. 

He said the CSOs also touched on issues of technology transfer, electric vehicle and value chain development  within the country.

State funds

The Ashanti Regional Secretary of the  NDC, Kwame Zu, said, among other things, that there was a lot of misapplication of state funds in the country.

That, he said, did not make it possible for any government that was committed to raise resources to undertake projects that were important.

"But we have indicated already in our manifesto that we cannot do some of these projects by ourselves as a government. We would need collaboration with private entities," he said.

A senior member of the Movement for Change, Solomon Owusu, said it was about time Ghanaians settled on an independent candidate after 32 years of relying on the NDC and the NPP.

"We have transcended the duopoly and we have to move and adopt an independent candidate," he emphasised.