Government not truthful to Ghanaians on ‘Dumsor’- Dr. Manteaw

The Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas has challenged the communiqué issued by the Ministry of Power describing the current reductions in lifeline electricity tariffs as a realignment of the electricity bills.

President John Dramani Mahama first made the statement at the Eid celebrations debunking the earlier communication as a government subsidy programme.

The president’s realignment assertion was a backtrack on the earlier communication rendered by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Power Ministry until Thursday’s press release.

But Chairman of the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas, Dr. Steven Manteaw contends the president and the power ministry are not being truthful to Ghanaians.

He insists the vacillation between subsidy and realignment is mere semantics.

Speaking on Ultimate fm’s Fact File hosted by Juluis Caesar Anadem, he fumed the government is deceiving Ghanaians.

‘For subsidy realignment, so far as I understand that refer to the same, refer to the same thing, we need to look nature and character of the issue we are discussing to be able to determine the kind of animal we are dealing with, here is the case the ECG, a very competent corporate body has told us that its under the instruction of government to expand the lifeline tariffs to cover all consumers, what it means is that for us the first safety unit will be subsidy, again we told that this under recovery will amount to three hundred million Ghana cedis over the next six months and that government will bear that cost.

If that is not subsidy I don’t know what it is. But I see there is a deliberate attempt to run away from the term subsidy, just like we saw in the case of ECG privatisation.

These are semantics and I think we should looking at the issue, its nature, and character to be able to determine what it is,’ he asserted.

Meanwhile, Deputy Minority Ranking Member of Parliament’s committee of energy and MP for Obuase East, Edward Ening indicates parliament will be hurling ECG and the power ministry before it for questioning over this argument.