Pay your bills now or we’ll disconnect you – ECG workers to Ashanti Regional Minister

Employees of the Ghanaian Electricity Company (ECG) have threatened to disconnect Ashanti Regional Minister Simon Osei-Mensah from the national grid if he does not pay the overdue electricity bills at his private houses.

The ECG employees staged a number of protests when the Minister ordered one of their bosses to be arrested, which is when they issued the warning.

The ECG employees are furious with the Minister’s conduct, especially because he just issued an order for the arrest of Mark Wiafe Asomani, the company’s Ashanti East Manager. This directive was issued as a result of the National Revenue Mobilization Taskforce of the ECG cutting off the Kumasi Technical University’s electricity because of unpaid bills.

The Workers’ Union of the ECG released a statement in response to the Minister’s conduct, requesting an apology. The Union gave an ultimatum, which expired on Tuesday, but the Minister has not yet apologized.

Employees at ECG have started wearing red bands to their offices across the country as a form of protest. They have made sure that customer service is unaffected in spite of this.

In the event that the Minister does not act appropriately, the Union leadership has stated that they want to escalate the protest. They insist that the Minister has to be held responsible for his acts and that his behavior is intolerable.

“If the regional minister owes any bill in his private house, we are going there,” an employee told Citi News on Wednesday. If he owes us money, we will visit his house this week, disconnect him, and then the police will have to come and take us all into custody.

“If he arrests any regional boss all of us will be at the prison yard. So, they should expand the prison yard all of us are coming. We are expecting him to apologise…We know all his houses …We are going there…He should prepare to pay his money, or we will disconnect him.”

Another worker said “The action of the minister is more of a security concern than our General Manager’s meeting at the REGSEC. The reason is that the actions can lead to other customers emulating what he did and we think that he should just apologise unreservedly to ECG then we move on. We have a series of actions to take. This is the first step That is why we said that if he is not apologizing someone should tell him to do so.”