Staff groups kick against VRA/Bui, ECG/NEDCo mergers - Say move not in country’s interest

The staff groups of the Volta River Authority (VRA) have expressed disappointment with the proposed draft bill to merge the VRA with the Bui Power Authority and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) with the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo).

They also kicked against the bill’s proposal to establish an independent Thermal Power Authority from the VRA’s thermal plants.

The VRA staff groups stated that “these decisions are not in the best interest of Ghanaians and would have dire consequences on the VRA and the people of Ghana,” and cited 25 reasons to support that assertion.

The staff groups, in a communique made available to the Daily Graphic yesterday, said “the staff of the VRA with the support of Ghanaians shall fearlessly resist and use all legitimate means at our disposal to ensure that the people of Ghana are not robbed of affordable electric power and energy security under the guise of mergers and privatisation”.

Reasons

As part of the reasons, they said the VRA was efficient in operating both hydro and thermal generation plants and had commissioned a number of solar stations to augment the thermal-hydro generation mix.

They said the VRA was the first to build and operate a thermal plant in the country, which it had efficiently operated for over 25 years, having operated hydro plants very efficiently for 63 years to the admiration of countries within the sub-region. 

“The idea to merge VRA Hydro with Bui is just a smokescreen and geared towards surreptitiously swaying Ghanaians of their true interest of selling these assets to themselves and cronies,” the staff said.

The VRA/NEDCo staff said the authority had made huge investments in those assets and instead of building them up, it was being broken apart “to make it easy to be thrown into the hands of few selfish persons to the detriment of the masses”, adding that both VRA and Bui Power had independently and efficiently managed their assets and the records were there to show.

The staff explained that the cost of power generated from Bui was high and if added to that generated from Akosombo and Kpong, “will lead to a high cost of power to the consumer”.

They further said since the VRA and Bui were both hydro-generation plants and depended on the Volta River for water, there would be dire consequences for the entity and the people of Ghana if there was drought which had been predicted in the coming year.

Again, they said the allocation of hydro-generated power was determined by the Energy Market Oversight Panel (EMOP) and so the entity would not have the choice of customers.

“This will mean that the power generated would be sold to mainly ECG and industries such as Volta Aluminium Company, who both owe VRA several millions of dollars and are not prompt with their payments as well,” the groups said.

It said the VRA was paid only 30 per cent of power sales to the ECG under the CWM month-on-month and that the non-payment posed liquidity challenges.

The VRA staff said revenue from the thermal plant (unregulated customers) was used to augment the VRA's cash flow, hence the survival of the VRA was dependent on its thermal businesses.

For such reasons, the VRA staff groups said they “cannot fathom why the government is in a hurry to hive off the VRA thermal assets and sell them to supposed private investors when these Independent Power Producers (IPPs) continuously threaten the government with shutdown for non-payment or delayed payments”.

“This idea of private participation or wholesale of the thermal plants will lead to the use of our national natural gas to generate power and sell at cut-throat prices to the people of Ghana and the export market,” the staff stressed.

The staff said after its position was made clear on the Cash Waterfall Mechanism in May 2024, and calls on the government to sell VRA Thermal Plants to private operators, the VRA Board Chairman, Kofi Tutu Agyare, invited leadership to a meeting where plans by the government to privatise the Thermal Assets of the authority was questioned

The VRA board chairman denied knowledge of any such notion and emphatically stated that no such thing would happen under his watch as board chairman since he knew the importance of the authority's contributions to the national grid.

The groups said as well-meaning citizens, they tried on several occasions to engage the management of the VRA to ascertain the existence of the bill, including writing to seek audience with management, which proved futile.

“Further probing by the staff group leaders at the meeting led to management admitting that they were part of a technical committee that worked on a report for the Ministry of Energy, proposing the VRA as a Holding Company.”

The groups said last Tuesday, they heard reports of an attempt to surprisingly lay the bills for the mergers before Parliament. 

Key stakeholders

“We wish to say here without any fear of contradiction that, the staff of VRA/NEDCo are key stakeholders in this issue and these very important and strategic decisions would significantly impact our lives, yet have never been engaged in the process,” it said in a communique made available to the Daily Graphic.

The VRA/NEDCo staff groups said the action was “another diabolical scheme to hive off the thermal department from the VRA to make it extremely easy for a façade of privatisation so that faceless people/politicians would take over these very important Ghanaian assets”.

“We, the staff of the VRA, understand the operations of the VRA and its assets, so it would be out of place to sit unconcerned and watch the government disintegrate the authority to the detriment of the Ghanaian populace,” the communique stressed.