The Electricity Company of Ghana have threatened a nation-wide blackout on Friday 26, August to drive home demand for government to rescind its decision to privatise the ECG but Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor has cautioned staff of ECG to desist from punishing Ghanaians.

According to him, “The Staff never informed us, all we heard is that they were on a so called 3-hour strike punishing ordinary Ghanaians just because you think you have issues with the concession that is very unfortunate."

Aggrieved workers of ECG begun a three-day; three-hour sit down strike across the country to protest the impending privatization of the Electricity Company of Ghana to a private concessionaire.

They claim the deal will not be in the interest of the workers and may eventually lead to loss of jobs, at least after five years.

But John Jinapor said, “Let’s be very fair to ourselves, can you do that in a private company where staff decide that we won’t serve customers. I think we ought to be guided, we ought to be cautions and we ought to respect the labour laws”.

The Public Utilities Workers Union (PUWU), spearheading the protest has called on government to review the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact which seeks to relinquish the ECG to private investors for 25 years.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), has also reportedly thrown its weight behind PUWU indicating that dialogue between the unions and the government is yielding no fruits.

The Public Utility Workers Union (PUWU) is among others, asking government to review the MCC Compact and modify the private sector participation to include pragmatic steps to bring efficiency to ECG.

General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Dr Yaw Baah said the grievances of the ECG Staff are legitimate.