- Government Should Sit Up

THE CHRONICLE Group of newspapers has launched a sort of crusade regarding the current energy crisis, which we all took earlier as not anything inimical to the country's economy.

This paper has twice pontificated on the demerits of the crisis as regards the general economy, the private sector and employment. Our sister paper, Chronicle on Saturday last Saturday, also voiced its apprehension about the situation which is now generating into something else.

Now officialdom has intervened to state that unless something is immediately done to save the situation, our dream of becoming a middle-level income country by 2020, could be a mirage. For as our sister paper pointed out, without effective electricity power or an avenue for power generation, it could be a farce to describe the private sector as the engine of growth of the country.

That is why The Chronicle applauds the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Paul Acquah for his boldness in asking the government to view the seriousness of the energy crisis as regards the private sector at the latest press conference held by the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Ghana of which he is the Chairman.

Currently, we should not be seen to be playing the ostrich. We have to call a spade a spade and not a big spoon. For without the private sector, government will find it difficult to accelerate the avowed aim of generating economic avenues and employment and its pledge and determination to make Ghana a middle-level income country.

The Chronicle still wonders why government has not fully committed itself to solar energy. Experts and even lay people have all voiced the choice for a solar energy programme for the country whereby the hydroelectric dam at Akosombo could be spared its present haemorrhaging as far as Mother Nature is concerned.

This paper had commented on the Osagyefo barge before and will later dwell on that subject but cautions those who were the cause of the present energy predicament to bow their heads in shame.

But the prayer of the Chronicle is that government should sit up on the energy crisis or else the junketing of the President for investors, the accolades and honours bestowed on the President and this country will come to naught. It seems we are still in need of our colonizers to teach us how to utilise our resources and to build our country.

The private sector is dying, the energy crisis is worsening and what the Chronicle will only say is that God have mercy on Osagyefo's Ghana.