Accra Academy Senior High has been experiencing total power cut over unpaid arrears owed to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
Reports suggest that the school was plunged into darkness on Monday evening, February 19 when the lights suddenly went off and students were forced to resort to their torch lights to study during prep hours and movement on campus at night.
In a media engagement, an unnamed teacher expressed his concerns and stated that, the Ghana Education Service (GES) is responsible for the payment of electricity bills for the school and as such any issues should be directed to the GES.
“The students were at prep and there were no lights so if students have been given assignments and things that they need to do and submit the following day, what will happen to it; they cannot submit them because there was no light for them to work. [ECG] came here this evening and told us that we are owing, so my colleague that they spoke to explained to them that, if we are owing, we are not the ones who are supposed to pay. You know where you have been getting your money from and this is not the first time.”
“They have been paying money to you, they can attest to that fact that it is not the school that pays, they know where the money comes from so if you come to the school and because it has not been fulfilled you want to cut us or take us from the National Grid, then what are we doing to ourselves? Yes, the school has a generator which we can power but the fuel that we have can even power for just an hour.”
In a media engagement, the ECG External Communications Director, Laila Abubakar, disclosed that the senior high school owed the company more than GHS 400,000. She also stated the ECG spoke to the school authority before proceeding to cut off their power supply and revealed that there have been meetings with the school heads on negotiations, on how to sort the issue on ground.
“They owe in excess of four hundred and eighty thousand Ghana cedis (GHS 480,000) and they have not made any payment since June 2023. Conversations have been held to reconnect them as soon as possible, what we need is an assurance of payment as soon as possible because the debt has been sitting there for quite some time. I believe whoever the paying agency for the school is would have to make a case for them either through payment or some assurance to ECG or a swift payment for the school, that is the only way we can see that the school will be reconnected.”
“Regardless, we are not doing this because we are insensitive, there is a docket that the National Tax Force work with and wherever they find themselves, they do the disconnection. They have a conversation with whoever, the management is. Earlier on, the lawyer who is in charge of prosecution and investigation at ECG, lawyer Abariga, confirmed that we have been communicating with management of the school to remind them of the debt that is owed, so whoever is paying should be made aware of this debt, so when it comes to disconnecting the revenue mobilization and revenue protection it goes beyond wanting to follow up on who exactly is paying for the school.”
Mrs. Abubakar clarified that the arrears in records are under the school’s name, which justifies their demand for payment from the school, regardless of who pays for them.
“That responsibility solely lies before the secondary school to get the bill paid. I believe that there is some components of it that comes from the Ghana Education Service, I don’t know in what manner these payments are facilitated on behalf of the school; what we know is our customer on our docket, on our base we know it is Accra Academy that owes.’’
The Executive Director for the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST) and education economist, Dr Peter Anti, called on government, particularly the GES to take into consideration these failures in order to rectify them effectively as their actions greatly take a toll on the academic affairs of the students.
“I think it was made clear that the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service should take proactive measures to ensure that at least our secondary schools are not taking off the National Grid just because they owe. I believe the impact of this on the student academic work and general wellbeing is enormous and nobody can downplay that. It is unfortunate the schools in Accra are experiencing this so you can imagine what is happening to schools outside Accra and the challenges these school administrators especially the head masters and other people are going through. I will say we got here because the leaders decided that they will not admit that there are challenges and when these things come from schools that are high class, I feel very happy, because if you are a school in one of these villages, when you speak, they would not mind you’’.
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Story by: Joycelyn Makafui Agbo | univers.ug.edu.gh
