The Accra Mail says 2001 started off with much hope and confidence for Ghana, but the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ghana Telecom (GT), and Ghana Water Company (GWC) are already spoiling the fun only four months into the new millennium.

The independent metro paper says ironically, they all bear the name Ghana proudly in their corporate identities but are refusing to make Ghanaians proud with their performance! The three utilities have come to represent some of Ghana's most time wasting and annoying establishments. Electricity Company of Ghana has become a gold medallist in the game of putting off power "by heart" Ghana Water Company scores top marks for "closing taps by heart" and Ghana Telecom breasts the tape with the speed of its inability to put Ghanaians in touch!

The above metaphors are neither meant to be clever nor funny, but truly represent a nation's utilities gone haywire. The harm being done the country by their combined ineffectiveness is incalculable. President Kufuor's "Golden Age of Business" will remain a pipe dream if these three most vital utilities continue with their bad ways. These three utilities have paradoxically undergone highly publicised structural changes in the immediate past, ostensibly to make them more efficient. ECG and GWC shed their civil service-like garbs and became "companies". They used to be corporations. GT even went further and invited the Malaysians, who now part own it.

They have all not surprisingly, and perhaps with some justification pinned all their hopes on the mast of tariff increases.