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General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG), Dr. Kwabena Opuni Frimpong has urged the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) to suspend the gazette which enforces the implementation of the new water and electricity tariffs.

According to him, government must ensure that the current energy crisis was addressed, and service providers made to improve on service delivery before any such tariff increment is carried out.

He added that government should intervene in the situation and work at fixing the energy crisis before increasing electricity tariffs; stressing the Christian Council is not happy about the decision by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission to increase electricity and water tariffs by 59.2 and 67.2 percent respectively ahead of the Christmas season.

Speaking on Okay Fm’s Ade Akye Abia Morning Show, Dr. Opuni Frimpong stated that their demand is not to empower Ghanaians not to pay utility tariffs because it is the responsibility of all Ghanaians to pay for regular supply of the services but unfortunately the services are not forthcoming.

He rather reiterated that “recent tariffs increment don’t correspond to the quality of service. Now some people don’t have regular supply of electricity for even 24 hours, businesses are struggling to thrive, coupled with the current high cost of living and erratic supply of water and electricity is very insensitive, unfortunate and must quickly be reversed.”

“As a Council, we think it is absolutely unfair for Ghanaians to pay such increment in utility tariffs when we have for the past four years suffered and endured power and water rationing,” he stated.

He urged the PURC to exercise patience with the implementation and rather ensure that the service providers improve upon the existing tariffs Ghanaians are paying in order to encourage them to pay any other tariffs.

He reminded the government not to take Ghanaians for granted for the fact that they are peaceful in nature; insisting on PURC to exercise patience a bit in the implementation even though it has gazette the new tariffs increment.