A STEEL and iron manufacturing giant, B5 Plus Limited, has called on government to support the company with adequate supply of electricity and water to stave off job losses.
The company, which was established under the government’s One District One Factory (1D1F) flagship programme, is reeling under production difficulties because of power and water challenges.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the metal factory, Mukesh Thakwani, said the company was currently operating at 30 per cent capacity because the Electricity Company of Ghana has been unable to meet supply of the 40 megawatts of power it initially requested.
According to him, the factory, which is envisaged to save Ghana of US$100 million in foreign exchange–in the area of steel and iron imports–at full operational capacity, can be scuppered by the utility challenges as the investors are worried about the current level of operation.
Mr. Thakwani said the company operated only in the night because the 20 megawatts of power it received. Currently it is stable in the period of ambient darkness during which the “limited megawatts of power are able to power our machines.”
He revealed that the government’s Assurance Committee of Parliament, after a visit to the factory in February this year, assured management of a possible intervention, but the water and electricity companies had not done anything yet to improve the supply to guarantee production.
He noted that the company had become a net exporter of steel products, supplying metal products to construction and mining firms in the West Africa sub-region with about 10,000 workforces and feared this could be affected.
The B5 Plus boss again raised issues of encroachment on the company’s titled land within the Nongo-Prampram District of the Greater-Accra Region as a result of litigation among family members, indicating that the situation was also affecting expansion of the US$80 million project.
“I am appealing to government to look into the land litigation issue for us because it is a big concern to us. Once we have a title to the land, we should not be troubled as an investor,” he submitted.
Mr. Thakwani told DAILY GUIDE that the company could move ahead with phase three of its project to enable it to employ more than 10,000 people.
By Ernest Kofi Adu