General News of Friday, 22 November 2019
Source: kasapafmonline.com
The leadership and members of the Senior Staff Association of the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) say they will no longer sacrifice their sexual pleasure to attend to emergencies.
The staff who are demanding the immediate payments of various sums of money owned them by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), VALCO, and NEDCo, say there have been several instances where when they are ‘enjoying their wifes the most’ they are called upon to attend to emergency cases.
The staff say they cannot continue to sacrifice their conjugal rights.
Addressing a press conference at the International Press Centre in Accra, Chairman of the Senior Staff Association of GRIDCo, Raphael Kornor said staff have resolved to embark on various actions if the GHc 250 million the President directed the Finance Minister to be paid GRIDCo is not paid.
The other debts they are demanding are the USD $32, 576,974.05 owed them by VALCO as at September 30th, 2019, the GHc 607 million owed by ECG as at 1st March 2019, the GHc 177 million owed them by NEDCo as at September 30th, 2019 and the GHc 94, 204,903.17 which is the PDS debt which the ECG collected during the suspension of PDS.
He further noted, “From the Friday, November 22nd, 2019: staff would treat all emergency work as normal work within the normal working hours. From Friday, November 29th, 2019, staff are going to march to the ECG office and the Ministry of Finance to picket in demand of our money. If by the close of work Wednesday, December 4th, 2019 all our debts are not paid, we would declare a sit-down strike. Following the sit-down strike, we shall impress upon GRIDCo Management to disconnect all customers indebted to us.”
Raphael Kornor added: “We are going to treat emergency services within normal working hours. In time past GRIDCo workers will be sleeping and they will call and you wake up. Ladies and gentlemen sometimes at the point of organism you have to leave your wife and attend to GRIDCo’s call. We cannot do that again.”
GRIDCo
The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) was established pursuant to the Energy Commission Act 1997 (Act 541) and the Volta River Development (Amendment) Act 2005 (692). This Act provided for the exclusive operation of the National Interconnected Transmission System (NITS) by a licensed independent utility for the transmission of electricity throughout the country. As such, GRIDCo was exclusively licensed to operate the NITS on December 15th, 2006 as a private limited liability company under the Companies Code 1963 Act 179 and was granted a certificate to commence business on December 18th, 2006. GRIDCo became fully operational on August 1st, 2008, following the transfer of the core transmission staff from VRA to GRIDCo.
The main functions of GRIDCo are to undertake economic dispatch and transmission of electricity from wholesale suppliers (generating companies) like VRA, Ameri, Karpower, Asogli etc and deliver such power to bulk customers including ECG, VALCO, Northern
Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) and the mines. GRIDCo also provides fair and non-discriminatory transmission services to all power market players, acquire and manage assets, facilities and system required to transmit electrical energy as well as provide metering and billing services to bulk customers.