Exhibit positive attitude - Minister tells ECG

Mr Emmanuel Kofi Buah, Minister of Energy and Petroleum, has urged all workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to exhibit positive attitudes at work to enhance good performance and corporate success.

He encouraged all public and private organisations to institute performance management procedure to ensure that hardworking staff is rewarded while non performers are made to sit up and improve upon their work. Mr Buah said this on Friday at the 10th National Best Employee Awards ceremony of ECG in Accra.


Mr Jonathan Asante, Principal Technical Engineer of Accra East (ECG), emerged the overall 2012 National Best Employee of ECG and received GH¢ 2000, certificate, a plaque, laptop and a trip to visit any country of his choice abroad.


Mr Stephen Ackah, a system operator in the Central Region, was the first runner-up and received GH¢ 1000, certificate, a plaque and a laptop while Mr Haruna Kpakpo Saka, a foreman at the Accra West Region won the second runner-up award receiving GH¢ 1000, certificate, a plaque and a laptop.


Mr Buah congratulated management for instituting the awards scheme over the past 10 years and said the people inadvertently downplayed the role of human capital which constantly turned the wheel of progress in the organization.


“My consolation is in the fact that you are evolving an enduring system to improve upon the quality of service delivery to the citizenry which must translate into tangible improvement in the service to the customer,” he said.

He commended management of ECG, Volta River Authority and GRIDCo for instituting performance management procedures as a measure of ensuring individual responsibility and corporate advancement to transform the work culture of these utilities.


Mr Buah charge employees to strife harder to reduce the system losses especially power theft from the current level to more acceptable levels since the revenue was needed to ensure that ECG is properly resourced to discharge its duties He urged management to manage the load shedding timetable well so as to distribute available power equitably and enable customers to plan the use of their share of the power.


He said government was working assiduously to address the current challenges facing power supply and urged them to put their best foot forward in recouping what was owned them by customers.


Mr William Hutton-Mensah, Managing Director of ECG, said over the years it had become more evident that technical competence alone could not deliver the corporate success of the company and that the missing link to staff performance had been attitudinal.


“The need for the right behavioral competence, appreciable character traits, personal discipline and positive attitudes cannot be over emphasised in every field of endeavor and it is mainly attitude that would improve the fortunes of the company,” he said.

He said any outage that would be experienced during the day time would be as a result of equipment failure or a planned maintenance programme adding that it will soon publish a load shedding schedule to reflect the current improved situation.


He said the company had embarked on live-line work project to carry out planned maintenance and fix faults on energized networks to benefit customers since they would enjoy electricity supply and live on the distribution networks at all voltage levels.


Mr Hutton-Mensah said management was improving upon the speed and accuracy of its billing process through the use of data loggers and the Automatic Meter Reading Technologies and urged employees of the company to be disciplined and work hard to protect its image.