Accra, July 11, GNA - Government on Saturday urged the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) and the utility companies to consider legitimate concerns raised by organised labour and manufacturers about the recently implemented utility tariffs.

A statement signed by Mr. John Tia Akologu, Minister of information, and copied GNA, urged the PURC, to especially take a second look at the increases applied to the non-residential and commercial consumers' category.

"The increases applied to these categories can have the adverse effect of derailing government's efforts of strengthening and growing the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector", it added.

The statement said that government was convinced that among other things, there may be an urgent need for the re-classification of the non-residential and commercial class in order to separate SMEs including hair dressing salons, carpentry shops, small scale engineering workshops from large scale commercial and service enterprises.

It asked PURC and the utility companies to look into complaints from a category of pre-paid residential consumers, "who allege that they are experiencing a more than commensurate increase in the cost of electricity credit purchased from Electricity Company of Ghana vendors."