The new company that will takeover power distributions and operations of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) under the Private Sector Participation of the Power Compact II Agreement is expected to begin operations on February 1.

The Meralco Consortium is led by the Manila Electricity Company of Philippines, which covers a third of the Philippines and served a customer population in excess of six million.

Mr Martin Eson-Benjamin, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of  MiDA, who made this known at a media stakeholders’ engagement in Accra, said all the interested parties and three agreements to the contract had been signed, while Parliament had also approved the deal.

He said the Authority was given 180 days to work on the conditions of the transfer and was optimistic it would meet the deadline on February 1.

Mr. Eson-Benjamin reiterated that no worker of ECG will lose their jobs under the Power Compact Two.

“The President, Nana Akufo-Addo himself has given the assurance and has stated publicly that no worker will lose his or her job. I also want to assure you that no worker will lose their job under the agreement. Workers should go ahead and do their jobs as expected and nobody will lose their jobs,” he stressed.

Mr.Eson-Benjamin maintained that it is important to complete the compact to open more opportunities for Ghana to benefit from future compacts.

Under the Power Compact II, six projects would be implemented to address the root causes of unavailability of power in some parts of the country.

The project comprised ECG Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) Financial and Operational Turnaround Project, Regulatory Strengthening and Capacity Building Project and Access Project.

The rest are Power Generation Sector Improvement Project and Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management Project, Social and Gender Integration, Environmental and Social Performance and Monitoring and Evaluation and Economics (M&EE).