Create league tables for utility companies – Energy expert

Accra, Sept. 3, GNA – An Energy expert has called on the West Africa Power Pool (WAPP) to establish a Best Performance Indicators regime by which member utility companies could be assessed.

Professor Abeeku Brew-Hammond, Director of the Energy Centre of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, who made the call, said the indicators would help to create a league table on which best performing member utility companies could be listed.

He was speaking on Friday at the ongoing three-day Institutional Reforms Exchange Programme organised for Chief Executive Officers and Director Generals of WAPP member utilities.

Prof. Brew-Hammond later told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that listing best-performing utility service providers on the league table would serve as an incentive for those at the bottom to strive to be on top.

“It will create a healthy competition among the utilities. We do not need an international organization to tell us how we are performing in the energy sector. WAPP can do it,” he said.

The suggestion comes at the back of frustrations expressed by a section of the Ghanaian public on poor service delivery by some of the utility companies.

Responding to Prof. Brew-Hammond’s suggestion, Mr Amadou Diallo, Secretary General of WAPP, told the GNA that capacity building and excellent performance were ideal to his outfit.

He said WAPP was therefore in the process of selecting five training centres to provide training programmes for best-performing utility companies.

Mr Diallo said: “We will take the best companies and modernise as well as increase their technical, financial and commercial capacity.”

He said the Exchange Programme was to provide the energy sector of WAPP member countries the opportunity to dialogue, network and exploit new opportunities of assessing and improving strategies for effective implementation of WAPP programmes.

WAPP was formed by member states of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) to establish a well-functioning and cooperative power pooling mechanisms within the framework of regional integration.

It is expected to provide the citizenry of the Community an increased access to stable and reliable electricity at affordable tariffs through the WAPP Generation and Transmission System infrastructure.