The Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) has announced a monthly loss of GH¢8.5 million in revenue to power theft and non-payment of bills and appealed to journalists to support it in educating power consumers to pay their bills for the company to remain in operations.
If a story in today’s issue of the Ghanaian Times is anything to go by, then it can be concluded that the Acting Managing Director of NEDCo, Mr Noble Dormenu, made the announcement and the appeal amid indescribable desperation.
The following quoted question: “If the customers don’t pay for power, how do we buy energy again to distribute?” which is attributed to Mr Dormenu is enough to paint that level of desperation.
However, the Ghanaian Times thinks the expression of the desperation should stem from actions the company has taken but have failed to yield results.
What steps have the NEDCo taken to retrieve the bills or stop the theft? What has been the response of its customers?
Journalists can disseminate the appeal to the customers to pay
their bills or the thieves to stop stealing power but how can that be done on a sustained basis, considering the fact that NEDCo is not the only entity whose problems must be reported by the media?
NEDCo has to review its current strategies of collecting bills if they are not working enough and go a step further to execute whatever strategies they would adopt on a sustained basis.
No effort is enough once it is not yielding the expected result(s).
Even without ascertaining its capital, it can be concluded that NEDCo would collapse in no time once it continues losing as much as GH¢8.5 million a month in the Ghanaian economy, without its management taking stern action(s), including prosecutions, to stem the problems.
And the collapse of NEDCo would amount to loss of jobs and cut of power to its innocent customers, both domestic and commercial, and the repercussions would be immeasurable.
Can NEDCo’s case be classified as an example of the cases of negligence and management’s attitude of sleeping on the job typical of indigenous state companies, all because managements can go scot-free even where it is clear the collapse of the entities is due to their making?
Why should managements of public organisations look on till the worst happens before they try fire-fighting approaches to address the problems?
Is it due to their lack of the acumen to be proactive or they may have probably siphoned all they need from the organisations because they know they would suffer no punishment for the loss of life lines for others?
What punishments were given to the managements of such collapsed public companies as Ghana Airways, State Fishing and Food Distribution corporations; Black Star Line Shipping Company and Bank for Housing and Construction?
The country cannot afford the collapse of NEDCo in an era when jobs are hard to come by and unemployment is already stinging even university graduates and others in their productive years.
Fortunately NEDCo knows the sources of its predicament – power theft and non-payment of bills – and so should act to reverse the situation.
