The Managing Director (MD) of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Mr Kwame Agyeman-Budu, has described accusations and allegations levelled against him by the unions of the state power distributor as untrue.
Some workers of ECG demanded the dismissal of Mr Agyeman-Budu at a joint National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on Friday, 9 April 2021.
The junior and senior staff unions noted that Mr Agyeman-Budu has failed at steering the affairs of the company in the almost two years that he has been in office.
“The Managing Director has been in office for close to two years and has shown lack of vision for the Company”
“This has been evidenced by misplaced priorities, which have led to the unavailability of critical materials such as meters, service cables conductors, prepaid vending accessories, maintenance materials, which have caused delays in connecting and supplying customers who have paid for such services while the limited resources have been applied on frivolous and capital projects at a time when the company is cash-strapped and unable to meet its financial obligations to stakeholders”, the staff said.
For example, they cited the “construction of a staff canteen at Asokwa District, Roman Ridge and the construction of new District office at Cape Coast where there are enough unused office spaces,” to make their point.
The statement continued: “Realising that the managing director is promoting the outsourcing of the collection of revenue from SLT customers to third parties at a commission of 7% discounted rate and 3% consulting fee, a service that is currently being executed effectively by staff and other institutions for free”.
“The SLT revenue accounts for approximately 40% of the company’s collection”.
Also, the staff claim “there has been a number of procurement process breaches under the clear supervision of the Managing Director. A clear example is the award of contracts of some six sub-stations where the recommendations of the evaluation committee was sidestepped and awarded to other companies,” the statement added.
But reacting to the claims, Mr Agyeman-Budu said the allegations were untrue.
According to him, the company, under his leadership, had initiated the one-day-one-service policy for new meters for customers.
He also noted that ECG was currently undergoing a new WiFi project, leveraging the government’s resources to connect ECG’s offices (regions, districts, customer service centres, sub-stations) with the fibre
Mr Agyeman-Budu also debunked claims that he did not approve the provision of adequate materials for the company’s operations was because there had been shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Most companies from whom we buy these materials folded up and were not producing, hence the little stock left was exhausted,” he added.
He said accusations that there were no accessories for vendors were unfounded because ECG did not buy accessories for vendors.
“What happens is that if you apply to be a vendor for ECG, you bring along your desktop machine to the ICT Directorate for the VPN to be installed onto it. Vendor buys a quota monthly and gets a percentage for selling power,” the MD indicated.
