VRA, NEDCo staff begin 'Ayuba must go' strike

The staff groups of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) have announced the withdrawal of their services to demand the removal of the Managing Director (MD), Osmani Aludiba Ayuba.

Effective today, Wednesday, 8 February 2023, the staff groups have withdrawn their services except for emergency and power vending activities.

According to a statement by the Staff Groups Leadership of VRA/NEDCo, signed by their representative, Mr William Asari, the staff will not go out to attend to any fault/issue except emergencies, although they will report to the office and carry out office assignments.

The emergencies include “broken conductors, broken poles, transformers on fire, pole burning etc.”

However, in such emergency cases, “staff will just isolate the fault and return to the office,” the statement noted.

The Staff Groups Leadership of the VRA and NEDCo recently announced a series of actions to drive home their demand for the removal of the MD.

According to the groups, despite being appointed as Managing Director to help turn around the finances of NEDCo, after three-and-a-half years in office, Mr Ayuba, “has failed to help turn around the finances of NEDCo” and hence can no longer continue to hold that office.

In an update on the resolution passed by the staff in all the five operational areas of NEDCo at an emergency meeting, the groups cited the “worsening financial performance of NEDCo, lack of a clear strategy for NEDCo, high cost of projects that have not yielded desired results, management inaction leading to revenue loss, exorbitant sole source procurement of Point-Of-Sale devices (POS) and worsening distribution losses,” as reasons for demanding the MD's removal from office.

The groups revealed that they had given the Managing Director on or before Monday, 31 January 2023, to “voluntarily resign or be removed from office by the NEDCo Board of Directors.”