Provide more metres for counpound houses - GJA President(Centre Spread) August 15, 2008

Story: Michael Donkor
THE President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Mr Ransford Tetteh, has called on the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to prevail on the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to provide more meters for compound houses to benefit from the government’s intervention.
He said the government’s intention to reduce the burden on consumers in the lower bracket of society motivated it to introduce the lifeline rate, but unfortunately this intervention was not helping the low income earner because they lived in compound houses where sometimes about 10 households used a single meter.
Mr Tetteh made the call when he inaugurated a 10-member PURC’s press corps in Accra yesterday.
The inauguration of the press corps was made possible with the support of the PURC.
The move by the PURC was aimed at assisting journalists who had interest in reporting on utility in the country to discharge their duties effectively.
Mr Tetteh said in the situation where the more you consume the more you pay, households that the lifeline intervention were supposed to benefit were rather losing.
He said to achieve the intended reason for the intervention, the PURC should encourage the ECG to provide more meters for compound houses.
Mr Tetteh commended the PURC’s efforts at enhancing its relationship with the media and urged other institutions to emulate the good example.
He said as media personnel, every opportunity to receive and disseminate information should not be ignored.
He said water and electricity were key drivers of development and progress in any society and encouraged members of the corps to expose challenges and possible inefficiencies in the sector with the view to improving services to the public.
Mr Tetteh urged the commission to do everything within its mandate to ensure that members of the press corps were well equipped to carry out their task of facilitating information flow to the consumer.
He advised the members of the corps not to speculate but clarify as well as verify issues before they report.
He said this was because issues regarding utility provision and regulation were very sensitive and should be dealt with with circumspection and fact.
Mr Tetteh appealed to the members to desist from sensationalism in educating Ghanaians on the critical role of the PURC and be guided by the concerns of journalism, which he said included accuracy, fairness and balance.
He noted that they could only be accurate when they sought clarification to the information that was made available to them by consumers bearing in mind that to every coin there were two sides.
Mr Tetteh expressed the hope that should the corps do their work according to the ethics and standards of their calling, issues concerning the sector could not be swept under the carpet.
The Chairman of the PURC, Prof. Frimpong Boateng, said the formation of the press corps had been on the agenda of the commission for many years.
He said the press corps was expected to team up with the public affairs directorate of the PURC to educate the public, as well as help the commission to improve it relationship with the consumer by way of making their concerns public.
Prof. Boateng stated that the press corps was not only to cover the mistakes of the commission but to uncover it as well.
The Executive Secretary of the PURC, Mr Stephen Adu, expressed the hope that the public would be better educated with the collaboration the commission had formed with the media.