Accra, Dec. 8, GNA – The Government and MBH Power Private Limited/SHREEM Electric Limited from India on Wednesday signed an $18 million agreement to extend electricity to 110 communities in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions.

The project under the Self Help Electrification Project (SHEP) is expected to be completed within 18 months.

SHEP is a complementary programme under the National Electrification Scheme (NES), where communities within 20 kilometres from an existing 11kilo volt or 33 kilovolt network, which had taken the initiative to provide the low voltage poles required for their communities, are connected to the National Electricity Grid.

Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, Minister of Energy signed on behalf of the Government while Mr Bagu Mukhi, Managing Director of MBH Power Private Limited initialled for his company.

He said the project formed part of government‘s medium-term policy objective to provide adequate and reliable power to meet the needs of Ghanaians and for export.

Dr Oteng-Adjei said to achieve its target; government obtained a $30 million loan facility from the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID) to finance NES.

“With this we are gradually towards achieving our target to increase National Average Electrification from 58 per cent to 80 per cent by 2015 and President John Evans Atta Mills directive to extend electricity to every community within the same period,” he added.

The Sector Minister said unlike the earlier arrangement under SHEP, government had now taken the decision to apply the EBID facility to cover the cost for extending electricity to selected communities in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions.

“All that is expected from these communities is to support the contractor and protect the materials to ensure that the project is completed successfully,” he added.

Dr Oteng-Adjei said the Ghanaian Authorities would be monitoring to ensure that all provisions in the agreement are adhered to.

He said as a Ministry, it did not compromise on local content and the agreement required at least 30 per cent local content and advised the contractors to ensure that Ghanaians, particularly indigenes in the two regions are involved in the execution of the contract.

Dr Oteng-Adjei reminded the contractors that there are three Ghanaian conductor manufacturing companies and others who treat low voltage poles and expressed the hope that the contractor would order their materials from them.

“We equally have qualified local contractors and we demand that you come in with your supervisors and sub-let to these local contractors and assist in building their capacity to take over from you after the project. By so doing you are helping the government to create more jobs for the people.

“We also demand that your people will respect our people and work with them amicably. We have instances that expatriates come and use abusive language on our people, we don’t want to encourage that and should we hear something like that, we will not hesitate to call for their withdrawal and send them back.

“This is our country, this is all that we have and we expect that you respect us. On our part, we will work with you; we will protect you and give you the maximum corporation,” he added.

Mr Bagu MuKhi said his company appreciates the transparency and professionalism put in place by the government and commended the Sector Minister and his team for the excellent job done.

He said the company had worked in other African countries including Nigeria but could say with confident that Ghana’s partnership was excellent and pledged the commitment of then corporate entity to deliver on time and abide by the spirit of the agreement to commensurate the opportunity given them to work for Ghana.