The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has challenged government’s distinction between private sector participation (PSP) and privatisation in its proposed arrangement for the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story on Tuesday, the Deputy Secretary-General of the TUC, Dr Kwabena Nyarko Otoo, argued that the proposed PSP arrangement effectively amounts to privatisation, despite government’s insistence that it has no plans to sell ECG’s assets.
“Government said that it is doing PSP, private sector participation. And we say that PSP and privatisation are one and the same,” Dr Otoo said.
He explained that privatisation should not be interpreted solely as the outright sale of an entire state-owned company or all its assets.
According to him, previous privatisation exercises involved the transfer of controlling ownership without necessarily requiring the government to sell 100 percent of its stake.
“In the original privatisation exercise, government did not sell everything 100%. It only sold a controlling share in the company,” he explained.
Dr Otoo said the union’s primary concern is the extent to which the proposed arrangement could affect ECG’s control over its assets and its core mandate of electricity distribution.
He argued that government’s assurance that ECG’s assets would not be sold does not fully address the concerns of organised labour if a private operator is given control over the company’s distribution function.
“Government says that we are not selling the assets, so ECG then is an asset management company, where workers used to manage an asset to a company that has been registered and has operated for decades to distribute power is now reduced to an asset management company,” he said.
“That is our difficulty,” he added.
The TUC’s position comes as government considers greater private sector involvement in ECG as part of efforts to improve efficiency and performance in Ghana’s electricity distribution sector.
However, organised labour has raised concerns about the structure of the proposed arrangement, particularly its potential implications for ECG workers, state control and consumers.
The debate over PSP and privatisation is therefore expected to remain a key issue as government engages stakeholders on the future management and operation of ECG.
