General News of Sunday, 14 April 2013

Source: radioxyzonline

ECG cuts off GBC, Kumasi, over bills; Workers threaten strike

XYZ News has gathered that the Ashanti regional quarters of State broadcaster Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) has been disconnected from the national grid by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for non-payment of electricity bills.

The station, according to XYZ News sources has been running on generators to power its operations for a few weeks now.

Reliable sources within GBC, Kumasi, and the Electricity Company of Ghana say the station has defaulted in paying electricity bills for a few months.

Information ferreted by XYZ News revealed that, the Corporation is unable to raise money to pay its debt.

A Facebook post by a former worker of the station, Ras Mubarak, adduced further confirmation to the story.

Ras Mubarak, who is now a member of the governing National Democratic Congress’s communication team posted on the social media site on Saturday April 13, 2013 that:”GBC cannot raise money to pay electricity bills, to the extent that, ECG has decided not to give them power for several months now for non-payment of bills”.

Ras Mubarak said: “The Corporation in Kumasi is running on generators and I understand this is the situation with almost all GBC regional stations”.

He suggested that incompetent and non-performing managers of the Corporation should be fired.

“I think every Senior Manager at GBC should be given a performance contract. If u can't meet targets and deliver, off u go”.

XYZ News also gathered that some of the workers at the regional stations have started grumbling over the strenuous difficulties they are contending with at work due to their disconnection from the national grid.

Some of the workers have started rallying themselves to declare a strike over the situation.

They are also complaining about their conditions of service.