So let’s say you are staying in a bed and breakfast establishment. You enter into an agreement with the owner for you to be provided with three square meals per day. You haggle over a price, and you settle down to reap the fruits of your arrangement.
Then imagine after a couple of years the owners come to you. They’re having some problems with getting ingredients to cook, so their ability to keep you fed around the clock has been compromised. There are problems acquiring grain, water shortages that make cooking all the time difficult, other issues.
In light of this, they announce they can only provide you with one square meal per day. Worse, you have to keep paying the same rate you used to pay for three square meals. You aren’t happy, but what can you do? You tune yourself towards surviving under this new arrangement.
But wait, there’s more! Now they come to you to tell you that you have to pay MORE, to continue enjoying one square meal per day. Now the issues causing the shortage haven’t been fixed, you have no idea when you are returning to three square meals- yet you have to pay MORE to enjoy the one square meal per day? Have you ever heard of anything so outrageous?
I’m pretty sure anyone in this situation would flip their sh*t, literally. If you’re Ghanaian or know anything about the phenomenon called ‘dumsor’, you’ve probably realised by now where I’m going with this long, seemingly pointless analogy.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), announced during the week increases to the tariffs Ghanaians pay for electricity and water. The exact percentages are 2.63% for electricity and 1.06% for water.
