Policy inconsistency
One promise of the current government was its policy to ensure efficiency in the use of official vehicles. Ministers of state were to use their own vehicles after the close of work. It started with glitz and publicity but died swiftly. Very few may remember the act.
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There was also the policy to remove fuel subsidies. We were told fuel subsidies stifled infrastructural development. We introduced the automatic adjustment formula to pass the full cost of fuel to consumers depending on the global situation.
But when the world market price of crude oil fell, we suddenly discovered that we owed bulk oil suppliers huge arrears which must be paid from the windfall profits. Prices are picking up and we are being told that due to the collapse of the cedi, the government has accrued arrears from subsidies.
In the face of the open defiance and arrogance displayed by the National Petroleum Authority in subverting the automatic adjustment formula, how do we ask Ghanaians to pay more, now that the tables have turned? Indeed, who will bell the cat?
Ghanaians have, for some time, been told about government policy to make public institutions pay directly for utility services.
It started with announcements that government institutions were to install prepaid meters for utility services. Then the utility service providers were told to deal directly with such customers with the explanation that they were provided budgets for such services.
The managements of the utility services took up the challenge to prove that they were efficient, capable and responsive.
One of the tools they use against ordinary consumers is disconnection of service. They decided to apply same to clients financed from the Consolidated Fund. Where such clients proved uncooperative, unresponsive or impecunious, their services were disconnected.
Then out of the blue, like a thunderbolt, an arrow of a quiver has been shot and fired. Cabinet has directed the stoppage of the exercise of disconnection as a means of collecting accrued bills.
The Cabinet directive has been issued although we have not been told of the abrogation of the policy or an alternative arrangement to have the bills settled.
Such lack of consistency in policy implementation and enforcement is a bane to national development. It is a major blockage to our effort at sustainable and consistent functional development.
We need to build in our people the necessity to appreciate the fact that the best helping hands that one can get are their own arms, as an old proverb says.
The utility companies have been accused of inefficiency and effectiveness. Even the Public Utility Regulatory Commission uses the inability of the service providers to collect what is due them as a means to deny them upward adjustment in tariffs, something which receives popular appeal, even when detrimental to the sustainable production and productivity of the utility companies.
The Cabinet decision is a stab in the back and a very dysfunctional way of dealing with the problem. What the government needs to do is to make meaningful provision to the institutions to meet their obligations, since when you cut your tongue to chew, as a popular Ghanaian proverb points out, you have not eaten any meat. It is nothing more than cutting our noses to spite our faces.
We need to take steps that will ensure that for those public institutions which generate revenue, a percentage of their incomes will be retained to enable them to pay for their basic needs, including utility services. For example, whereas it makes popular sense to say that utility services to health facilities should not be disconnected, it is important that bills are settled on time. When such services are not readily available, money is provided for either tanker services for the supply of water or the purchase of fuel for the running of generators to provide power.
At a time that the government takes pride in working to wean a number of institutions from the Consolidated Fund, it does not make sense, economically or as part of good governance, for Cabinet to interfere in the affairs of otherwise limited liability companies, without recourse to the board and management of the institution.
The government must respect others who have been given public resources to manage. That is the only way that our country can promote sustainable development, make meaningful and functional progress and promote good governance and constitutionalism.
There is the need for us to insist on congruence between policy and action. That is the only way to move ahead positively. One step here and two steps there do not make for progress or development.
