Tussle Over ECG Boss

Information reaching City & Business Guide indicates that there is a tussle over who becomes the substantive Managing Director (MD) of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). The paper has gathered that the current National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration intends to promote someone below the rank of a director to become the overall boss of the strategic national asset, a situation which most senior managers in the company are unhappy about. Sources within the establishment told the paper that one William Hutton-Mensah, who is the Volta Regional Director of the company and being pushed by bigwigs at the Castle, is currently in South Africa undergoing training to become the MD. This paper has learnt that there are eight directors currently at ECG and about three of them qualify to become MD. According to sources, Dr. Smart-Yeboah, Director of Customer Service, is the most competent among the three persons. But he has been tagged a member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). Due to this development, he has been asked to vacate his position at the head office and move to the Ashanti region to take charge of the regional office. ECG is currently headed by Anthony Gyampoh, Eastern Regional General Secretary of the ruling NDC, but some industry watchers and critics have raised questions about his credibility. They have argued that Mr. Gyampoh is not a technical person and does not have the expertise to manage ECG and questioned the capability of some board members including Joseph Allotey-Jacobs to make the company viable. The country�s power transmission has already been hit with a barrage of problems this year, forcing some manufacturing firms to operate below their capacity levels. For instance, in May, this year, several firms operating in the industrial hub of Tema lost millions of Ghana Cedis because of power outages which persisted for about week. Ghana Cement Manufacturing Limited (GHACEM), the largest cement producer in the country, was one of the hardest hit. It claimed that it recorded loses to the tune of over GH�2 million after five days of power outage. Most of the players in the industrial enclave also expressed grave concerns about the situation, saying it has affected productivity and revenue levels though the situation has slightly improved lately.