Staff of the Volta River Authority and NEDCO across the country are threatening a nationwide strike as government moves to privatise assets of the Volta River Authority (VRA).
Government has proposed draft bill that aims to merge the authority with the Bui Power Authority.
The proposed draft bill aims to merge VRA with Bui Power Authority, combine the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) with the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo), and establish an independent Thermal Power Authority, according to a statement from staff of the VRA.
It is this proposed merger that the staff are up in arms against. Workers at the VRA headquarters office in Accra have clad in red bands to register their displeasure with the merger.
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In a statement issued by the leadership of the Staff Group of VRA, the move is only “another diabolical scheme to hive-off the Thermal Department from VRA to make it extremely easy for a façade of privatization, so that faceless people/politicians would take over these very important Ghanaian assets.”
The Group says the proposed merger is not in the interest of Ghanaians and would “fiercely resist” it.
“We the Staff of VRA, understand the operations of VRA and its assets so it would be out of place to sit unconcern and watch the Government of Ghana disintegrate the Authority to the detriment of the Ghanaian populace,” the statement said.
According to the workers, the Board Chairman of VRA denied knowledge of the merger when workers confronted him but after a further probe by leaders of the Staff Group of VRA, management admitted that “they were part of a Technical Committee that worked on a report for the Ministry of Energy, proposing VRA as a Holding Company.”
The group maintained that the idea to merge VRA Hydro with Bui is just a “smokescreen and geared towards surreptitiously swaying Ghanaians of their true interest of selling these assets to themselves and cronies.”
They asserted that VRA has made huge investments in these assets and would be “broken apart” if given to private investors. “Both VRA and Bui Power have independently and efficiently managed these assets and the records are there to show,” they added.
