Ghanaian Consumers Can Sue Electricity Conpany Of Ghana (ECG)

...BLAME HIS [ECG MD] IGNORANCE AND THE MISSING CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL...

...says Jean Yaw Twum Lukaz MIH, Consumer Advocate

Ignorant and arrogant statements by Mr. Jude Adu-Amankwah, Managing Director of ECG, marked the moment of truth for the lack of a Consumer Protection Law in Ghana. The Consumer Protection Bill is still lost in the files of the /ministry of Trade due to the manipulations of companies like ECG who feel threatened by its provisions. The Consumer Protection Bill is still under the carpet so that Ghanaian Consumers can continue to hear the trumpets of ignorance coming from "unenlightened" people in his likes.

For a whole Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Boss to make such a statement with the intention of intimidating Ghanaian consumers is a sad story. Mr. Jude Adu-Amankwah, Managing Director of ECG, called the bluff of Ghanaian electricity consumers when he made the statement that consumers are helpless receivers of poor electricity supplies who are receiving a favour from ECG and not a service demands his resignation. He simply does not understand the responsibilities he has been given.

Commercial influence in our politics and judicial system is degrading consumer protection in Ghana whilst denying Ghanaian Consumers of their rights. Lack of a small claims court and Consumer Redress systems makes consumer actions a matter beyond the reach of poor Ghanaian consumers.

Electricity Companies have been sued worldwide and Ghana is not a new story. Consumers will need to initiate a class action against ECG. The problems arise when it comes to proof but consumers do not need to be technicians to prove that ECG is supplying poor quality electricity to Ghanaian Consumers. The equipment needed to consistently measure and record the quality of electricity being delivered to Ghanaians is not readily available but simple experiments do the trick.

In most of the developing countries where consumer class actions have been brought against electricity suppliers and consumers have won the adjudication has been rooted in the existing Consumer Protection Laws which give consumers a framework for redress. Examples are India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.

ADVOCATE ARVIND GUPTA: COMPANY CAN SUE POWER SUPPLIERS UNDER CONSUMER LAW: SUPREME COURT

ADVOCATE ARVIND GUPTA: COMPANY CAN SUE POWER SUPPLIERS UNDER CONSUMER LAW: SUPREME COURT

YOU CAN'T SUE ECG - MD DECLARES

By Francis Xah

Tuesday, 28 April 2009 http://www.newtimesonline.com

Customers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) whose property and equipment get damaged through power outages cannot sue ECG in court. “Even if they do, they can never win”, Mr. Jude Adu-Amankwah Managing Director of ECG, has said. Answering a question at a press conference yesterday, jointly held by the ECG, the Volta River Authority and GRIDCO, a company responsible for the minuteness of transmission lines to explain the April 20 power outage that plunged the whole country into darkness, Mr. Adu-Amankwah said if a careless driver, for example, crashed into an electric pole resulting in a power outage, how could customers sue ECG for that. He said natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and lightening could also cause power outages, so a customer who sued ECG did not stand the chance of winning that suit. He said the ECG had not signed any contract with customers that, there would never be a problem with the power it supplied to them. On power supply, he disclosed that the ECG would have to double its capacity every 10 years to ensure adequate and reliable power supply to customers. Mr. Adu-Amankwah mentioned obsolete equipment, weak transmission system and the lack of spinning reserve in the generation system, was the causes of the April 20 power outage. Besides those weaknesses, he said, GRIDCO had installed automatic frequency load shedding (AFLS) devices in the system which automatically interrupts supply to sections of ECG’s customers whenever there was a decay in frequency in the system. “The situation in all these areas can be attributed to the operation of the AFLS, the overloaded and weak distribution networks,” he said. Joseph Wiafe, Managing Director of GRIDCO, for his part, said his company’s role was to develop and maintain the National Interconnected Transmission System (NITS) and provide non discriminatory open access to all power producers and bulk consumers. He said the national power grid comprise about 4,500kilometres of high voltage transmission lines with 43 substations that served as plant substations or transformer. Mr. Wiafe said the power network was faced with over aged and obsolete equipment that were installed in 1965. He said overloaded facilities were due to the inability to increase capacity to match demand and added that maintenance work was also hampered by lack of spare parts. Mr Wiafe said to prevent total system collapse, AFLS devices were installed to rectify the fault and then restore those loads back as quickly as possible, and noted that the April 20 incident resulted in a total system collapse. “There was an explosion of a substation device, the debris hit a lightening arrester which also exploded, rendering two supply lines from Tema to Accra out of service”, he explained. The Chief Executive of VRA, Owura Sarfo, said the projected power demand for 2009 was 1,309 mega watts, while available generation was 1,482 mega watts. He said the reserve margin of 227 mega watts was equivalent to two gas turbines of 110 mega watts. Owura Sarfo gave an assurance that VRA has taken the appropriate steps to reduce the incident of such faults to the barest minimum. “Fortunately, we have the men and the staff to keep the system in good state”, he said.   He said the commissioning of the 200 mega watt Sunon Asogli plant next month, would help address the nation’s future power demands. On the statement by the Managing director that customers who go ahead and take the ECG to court can never win the case against the ECG, Mr Ace Ankumah a legal Practitioner said the Managing Director’s statement admits that customers can sue, but the Managing Director is confident of victory. That contradicts his earlier position that the customers cannot sue. He recalled that even when the ECG was a statutory corporation, the High Court held (in the case of Hasnem v. ECG /1992/2 GLR 250) that N.L.C.D. 125 imposed a duty on the ECG to supply electricity to customers who had such contracts with them, and were therefore required to take such steps as were reasonable to ensure safe supply of electricity. “According to the court, the breach of the duty would give the customer a cause of action and might also afford evidence of negligence. ECG was held to owe a duty to their customers to ensure that their cables were capable of serving and actually serving all the places for which it was intended to serve.” Mr. Ankumah said even though the plaintiffs ultimately lost the case, it was because they could not prove that the relevant cable was inadequate to service the area in question. “The principle was, therefore, established that if there is evidence of negligence, the ECG would be liable to the judicial process.” “Of course, there would be no liability if the cause of the damage to customers’ property was a third party or an Act of God (eg floods and earthquakes) over which the ECG has no control.  However, that does not amount to immunity from legal action, and certainly does not constitute a basis for arguing that the ECG was somehow guaranteed legal success in every legal action. “Definitely, if there is proof of negligence, ECG will be held liable.  Indeed, if it can be proved that ECG had used inferior material to build or construct its pylons and /or poles when it knew that the area was prone to earthquakes and floods, ECG will have liability”, Mr. Ankumah said

 

Ban Monsodium Glutamate in Ghana!!!

The effects are known but regulators are silent and blame consumer advocates and consumers for keeping quiet and product misuse respectively. On air yesternight, 23rd April 2009 at 9pm on TV Africa 'Oman Yi Mu  Nsem' the host, Adakabre blamed Consumer Advocates for their silence and did not leave out the standards and regulatory agencies for their lack of consumer education on critical consumer safety issues.

 

Representing the consumer front, Jean Lukaz, the Executive Director of the Consumer Partnership (The COP) corrected some of the misperceptions surrounding consumer advocacy in Ghana, 'People tend to blame consumer advocates and activists but forget to realise that they also have responsibilities as consumers', he said. Jean Lukaz confronted the host, Adakabre as to whether he has ever taken a sample of some soup prepared by a chop bar [local/ethnic restaurant] to the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) for testing as he had personnaly suffered injury from consuming the product as a result of excessive use of monosodium glutamate.

 

Kofi Essel a Director from the FDB reiterated the product misuse mantra and charged Ghanaian Consumers to look out for bad products whilst alerting the regulatory bodies and Consumer Organizations. But the question remains as to how accessible these agencies are..nobody knows their telephone numbers and neither do they have toll free lines. Consumers will not take pains to look for directions to their office in the region of Accra, for example to go through any bureaucracy that will not materialise, it appears. Why can't the FDB and Ghana Standards Board (GSB) have offices in every district and in the commercial areas to make it easier for them to conduct market surveillance and for consumers to recognise their seriousness in getting down on issues?

 

Jean Lukaz further questionned the responsibility of the agencies and the government in disseminating critical Consumer Education (CE) and subsequently the roles of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) and the Information Services Department.

 

We must reckon  that the laws and regulations in Ghana are in English and over 60% of the population is illiterate. How do they know the laws that govern their rights and responsibilities and how do they read the labels on products on the market to determine their safety for consumption?

 

The Ghana Standards Board (GSB) has been doing their bit with Consumer Education through sensitization workshops and media advocacy. This was disclosed by Prudence Asamoah Bonti, a senior officer of GSB on the program.

 

The GSB has also been involving consumers on their Technical Committees (TCs) as part of the international drive by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Consumer Policy Committee for Developing Countries (DEVCO/COPOLCO) in promoting consumer participation in standardization. The Consumer Partnership has consumer representatives on several TCs and initiated the development of standards for the tourism sector under TC18.

 

The Consumer Partnership is calling on all Ghanaians being affected by the monosodium glutamate menace to get doctor's reports and send us copies for action. It is only by complaining with the proven evidence can we make progress on this. The COP is also starting market surveillance to collect food sample for testing by the FDB and publish the results for a Consumer Hall of Shame.

By Jean Lukaz MIH