Delaying appointment of petroleum-sector boards is a bad decision – COPEC to government

The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers, COPEC, is calling on the government to fastrack the appointments of the boards of directors at the petroleum and oil-related sectors.

COPEC says the management of the sector cannot be delayed since a lot of measures and plans must be executed to boost the revenue in the sector.

Speaking on Accra-based Citi News monitored by GhanaWeb, the Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah stated that delaying the appointment of the Board of Directors and operations will be a bad decision for the government and general consumers.

“The appointing authorities should step up the process to ensure that these institutions that are currently on autopilot do not fail. Those who are going home should be made to go home; those who are coming in should be made to come. We’ve also requested for quality appointment to the energy sector institutions to ensure that, the kind of lapses we’ve seen in the past, we do not see them anymore,” he explained.

He further stated that “once we wait, we would want to impress on authorities to hasten the process because people are still buying fuel. BOST will continue to work, TOR will continue to work, Ghana Gas will continue to work, Ghana Cylinder will continue to work but as to whether any boards are in place to oversee some of the operational issues, that remains largely at the bosom of the appointing authorities, and we would want that process hastened so that we will get the right kind of appointments to these places,” he noted.

Meanwhile, COPEC has also called on the government to ensure that, only persons with requisite knowledge and expertise are assigned to manage the various energy sector institutions in the country.

“Your energy institutions contribute either positively or negatively to your economic life. Once you have leadership that is mindful of numbers and are willing to take economic decisions, the energy establishments are safe. If you put in leaderships that are also there to take political-reign-seeking decisions that only allows them to enrich a few people at the expense of the Ghanaian people, we will continue to have the kind of misalignment and problems that we have in the energy sector. We are hoping that the government will make it a priority to appoint performers whose only basis for an appointment is on competence. And then again, it shouldn’t become business as usual; square pegs in round holes,” he added.