The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) has declared that the increases in tariffs will cause a general increase in prices of goods and worsen the already deplorable economic status of Ghanaians.
In its view, Ghanaians ought not suffer as a result of the poor management of the economy by the Mahama Amissah-Arthur NDC government.
AFAG described the increases in utility tariffs, which took effect on Wednesday, October 1, 2014, as announced by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), as an exercise of bad faith.
“This is a slap in the face of Ghanaians,’’ the statement from AFAG said.
Hardships
It stated that in the midst of the current economic hardships triggered by excessive corruption vis-a-vis the inability of the utility companies to justify the relevance of previous price increases, “we consider this latest increase in utility tariffs an exercise of bad faith.’’
AFAG therefore, urged the government to plug the waste in the system by implementing the judgment of the Supreme Court that ordered Woyome to refund over GH¢50 million, then equivalent to $50 million to the state, as well as the ruling by Justice Dotse for Waterville to refund to the state an amount of €22 million.
The AFAG statement also called on the government to recover the over $ 400 million missing in the GYEEDA project from those officials who had misappropriated the amount.
Consolidated Fund
The statement said, for example, that Mr Elvis Afriyie Ankrah and Adu Asare, who supervised wasteful expenditure of millions of dollars at the World Cup causing Ghana's poor performance in Brazil could be avoided by a strong financial policy.
These are but a few of the itemised list of corrupt practices the statement mentioned, promising that the full list would be made available soon to Ghanaians.
Moving forward, the statement said the PURC had no justification for the recent hikes, since the press release by the PURC for automatic adjustments in increments for the first quarter of the year were because of the cedi-US dollar exchange rate, inflation and world market prices of crude oil.
Currently, the statement said the cedi was appreciating against the dollar and inflation was stable at 15.9 per cent.
Additionally, the AFAG said world market prices of crude oil had not some up, which was less than $100 per barrel (far lesser than the oil shocks of 2008 where prices soared to over $140 per barrel).
Despite these improvements, the statement observed that the "dumsor" had become "dumkoraa", and this was inexcusable.
The statement accused President Mahama, who according to AFAG had promised not to introduce more taxes, yet had introduced over 165 new taxes.
‘’You said fuel prices will be reduced drastically when it was GH¢3 a gallon at $100 per barrel on the international market, yet at the current price of $95, it is GH¢15 per gallon. This is unrealistic,’’ the statement pointed out.
The statement claimed that, Ghanaians were better off relatively with a "dumsor with a timetable to a dumkoraa without a timetable”.
