Journalist Kwesi Pratt has cited a previous attempt to privatise revenue collection at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as evidence that the proposal is not new and has failed before.
Mr Pratt said the Rawlings administration, under the direction of the IMF and World Bank, once handed ECG’s revenue collection to the French electricity company.
He said the arrangement eventually became a “total disaster” and was later terminated by the Ghanaian government.
“This is not the first time that revenue collection and so on of the Electricity Company of Ghana is to be privatised,” he said on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana.
Mr Pratt said Ghana also entered into a similar arrangement with Aqua Vitens Rand of South Africa to manage the Ghana Water Company.
According to him, that agreement also failed and Ghana eventually moved away from the arrangement.
“We also signed a similar agreement with Aqua Vitens Rand of South Africa to manage the Ghana Water Company. That was a total disaster and we also had to run away from that privatisation,” he said.
He therefore urged officials pushing for private sector involvement in ECG’s revenue collection to study the country’s previous experiences.
“So it’s not like we haven’t privatised before. We privatised before and the consequences were disastrous for Ghana,” he said.
Mr Pratt said the previous failures should inform the current debate over how ECG’s revenue collection should be managed.
