The Mines and Energy Committee in Parliament has noted that, Energy Commission did not do enough broad stakeholder consultations before pushing for the ban on importation of second hand electrical appliances.
This came to light when Executives of Concerned Second Hand Dealers Association presented a petition to the Mines and Energy Committee in Parliament about the banning of electrical appliances.
The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Samuel Atta Akyea who received the petition, assured to invite Energy Commission together with the Executives of Concerned Second Hand Dealers Association for a dialogue to find a lasting solution to the issue at hand.
Addressing the media after a fruitful discussion with the Mines and Energy Committee, the President of Concerned Second Hand Dealers Association, Mr. Daniel Asare disclosed that, even the Energy Commission themselves agree with them but because of their arrogance, fear and panic from the general public to see their incompetence about their job, they are still showing their naivety and shoddy work. “The work done by the Commission is fiasco and we will advise the sitting government to start investigating them immediately and quickly make changes at the Energy Commission to avoid future harm to the government and the nation at large”.
He pointed out that, it is very shameful for a high institution like the Energy Commission to state in their press release that, used appliances are high energy guzzlers.
Mr. Asare averred that the Commission made it known that in 2003, a study conducted by the Energy Foundation revealed that a whopping 30% of the total national electricity generation was wasted on used appliances. “We want to ask the Energy Commission what work at all are they doing for our dear nation? Do they have proper researchers? We don’t think they have since they are using twenty (20) solid year old research which was not even conducted by them. They are just failures and causing financial lost to the state. They need to be sacked”.
The Commission according to Mr. Daniel Asare, deceived the sitting government with snarky tactics by using 2012 slabs which was boldly written in their press release. .
“Mr. Hurbert Zan through an interview with Accra based radio station Atinka FM on their morning show dated 27th January 2023 stated that, the Commission were banning these second hand electronic appliances because of our weather climate being different from the European weather so these appliances becomes dangerous and unfriendly to use in Ghana.
We are telling Mr. Hurbert and the entire Energy Commission to go back to school and learn well before they come out with this diabolical statement. We could even see from where we are sitting that some of them are using fake certificates and do not merit the positions they are handling. It is only car tyres which due to European weather are been changed to use
specific types during the winter season. So who is lecturing them with this mischievous statement”?.
He indicated that, the Commission made a false statement to the general public about the terminology “Dumping” by defining it as the practice of exporting to another country or territory products that: contain hazardous substances; have environmental performance lower than is in the interest of consumers or that is contrary to the interests of local and global commons; are often too inefficient to sell in the appliance markets of the countries of manufacturer or their export inflicts economic, social and environmental cost on vulnerable populations in the receiving countries.
The President further hinted that, on 26th January 2023, the same Mr. Hurbert said on Adom FM show Edwaso Nsem that if Ghanaians can afford to buy “iPhone 14 PRO MAX” why can’t we afford to buy brand new electrical appliances. “How can a person employed to work for such a higher institution make such a shameful statement on a big platform forgetting all his family members and people from his hometown cannot afford to buy iPhone14 PRO MAX We want him and the Commission to understand that, there are still some people in this country who are not using mobile phones at all not to even talk of common “yam” phones due to economic hardship”.
The Association asked, “Which website did they get this terminology Dumping from or they conjured or formulated it themselves. We are very sure they don’t know what they are saying but just saying and typing anything that comes in mind. We are stating categorically that Dumping is a term used in the context of international trade. It’s when a country or company export a product at a price that is lower in the foreign importing market than the price in the exporter’s domestic market. Dumping is legal under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules unless the foreign country can reliably show the negative effects the exporting firm has caused it’s domestic producers. The big question here is; do we have domestic producers for these outlined electrical appliances the Commission is banning? We therefore draws the attention of the Commission on the terminology Dumping as having direct relation with cheaper prices or prices relatively lower but not what they said in their press release”.
