National Security Has Not Been Proactive On Krobo, ECG Brouhaha – Security Analyst

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Security Analyst, Adib Saani, has accused the National Security Secretariat of Ghana of not being proactive enough about the ongoing conflict between the people of Krobo and the ECG, which has resulted in the company cutting off power to Krobo communities.

According to Adib, the secretariat should have acted and intervened earlier because cutting off power to Ghanaians for more than two weeks has serious security implications.

“It (the cutting out of the light) is a major issue; livelihood is being destroyed because a lot of people rely on electricity as a means of survival. Hospitals are not able to operate, and all of these have implications for human security. From day one, this has been a security issue, and I would have expected that National Security would have acted a bit early. They acted late,” the security analyst said in an interview with GhanaWeb.

Also, Adib Saani said that if the ECG intentionally cut off the power from the Lower and Manya Krobo municipalities, they would have breached Ghana’s laws and international laws on people’s right to have access to power.

He noted the current challenges the company is having with the pre-paid meter installation exercise in the two districts is because it decided to use force by deploying personnel of the Ghana Armed Forces rather than using dialogue.

“Going there with the military was wrong and is tantamount to abusing the military, which is not good enough. It is not their work; their work is to defend. Who are they defending against? It is stupid for anyone to think that it was a good idea to go with the military,” he said.

Adib made these remarks on the back of reports that the National Security Minister, Albert Kan Dapaah, has met with leaders of the two Krobo municipalities, which have been cut off from the national grid, Lower and Manya Krobo, and the Managing Director of the Electricity Company Ghana (ECG) to come up with a road made to resolve the issues at hand.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of the ECG has justified the decision of his outfit to cut the power supply from communities in the two municipalities in the Eastern Region since July 27, 2022.

According to Samuel Dubik Mahama, even though he knows the consequences of cutting power supply to households and businesses, the right thing must be done.

He said that the ECG had no option but to cut the power supply because two communities in the Manya Krobo Municipality have refused to accept the pre-paid meters his agency is installing and because they connect themselves to the electricity network anytime they are cut off.

“… electricity (supply) is a grid; if somebody is tempering with it, you cannot give the other person stable power, and if we don’t have access to the grid, how can we work? So, we then decided to shut down that line because they kept on tripping the line that was leading to Somanya. So, we then decided to shut down the whole feeder because we need to shut it down, come and sit down, and let’s have a conversation as the way we are going to move forward,” he said.

By: Ghanaweb