The underfire Managing Director of the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo), Osman Aludiba Ayuba, is fighting back allegations of incompetence levelled against him by his staff.

Mr Ayuba said decisions were taken in the best interest of the company and called on the staff to exercise restraint and allow the board to address all issues raised.

“We are in control and we know we have taken the best decisions to the best of our abilities supported by the board and untoward is happening,” Mr Ayuba said in an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM on Wednesday.

He added that “they [staff] are talking about the financial performance, Yes, we would like to make profits but in operational areas, we have serious challenges that do not allow us to really make the profits that we want to do.”

The staff of the NEDCo on Wednesday, February 8, partially withdrew their services at all their operational areas effective.

The industrial action is due to the failure of the Board of Directors to meet the demand of the staff calling for the removal of the Managing Director, Osman Aludiba Ayuba after several engagements.

Currently, all field services have been suspended except for emergency situations and power vending.

As part of their partial withdrawal of services, the staff of NEDCo said they will not go out to attend to any fault/issue except in emergency cases.

The emergency cases include broken conductors, broken poles, transformers on fire, pole burning etc.

The staff added that in all emergency cases, they will just isolate the fault and return to the office.

This comes after the staff in a petition presented to the Board of Directors of the company, citing among other things the “worse financial performance of NEDCo, lack of a clear strategy for the company, exorbitant sole source procurement of point-of-sale devices and worsening distribution losses,” to back their demand.

They added that the company has retrogressed since Mr Ayuba took over as the managing director some three years ago.

“The net financial loss of NEDCo instead of improving has deteriorated from GH¢315.398 million in 2018 to GH¢392.406 million as of September 2022. The estimated net loss for 2022 is over GH¢400 million. This means NEDCo’s performance deteriorated by at least 24% over the period,” the staff said in the petition sighted by Citi News.