Health Minister Decries Price Hikes In Water, Electricity

Accra (GAR), - The Minister of Health, Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, has expressed concern about the negative effects of increases in water and electricity tariffs on her sector and proposed that a way should be found to ease the burden. In a memorandum to the Minister of Works and Housing received in Accra today, the minister said although she appreciates the need to increase tariffs of the two utilities, these increases were posing problems for the health sector and the country as a whole. She said the sector uses electricity and water in large quantities and cited the example of 1986 where bills for the two utilities amounted to nearly half of the non-wage recurrent budget of the sector. "This memorandum is to explore the possibility of either waiving the tariffs or establishing special rates for health institutions to prevent the situation where these huge bills are passed on to patients with its attendant social upheavals or utility services are cut off because of inability to pay bills." Dr. Brookman-Amissah said for the past 10 years, the country has been waging a war against guineaworm and the goal is to eradicate the disease by this year. She said through close collaboration with the Ministry of Works and Housing, water supply and its availability have been improved in a number of risk communities. "With the new tariffs, we are worried that some of these communities might not be in a position to meet their increased financial obligations. "We are therefore suggesting that to prevent the situation where these identifiable communities will go back to their ponds and the country will end up spending millions of cedis to institute guineaworm and other water-related diseases control programmes, we wish to advocate affordable tariffs for these targeted communities." The Electricity Company of Ghana last week announced a 180 per cent increase in tariffs with retrospective effect from last month.