Chairman of the NEDCO Senior Staff Association, William Asare, has revealed that over 200 households are owing up to about GHS462,000 of electricity bills due to illegal connections in the Northern Region, which is causing the authority significant losses.
Speaking about the attacks on NEDCO officers by residents over refusal to pay bills, William Asare indicated that the situation hasn’t changed, with more debt piling up. This, he disclosed, has resulted in NEDCo losing over 45 percent of the power supplied in communities in Tamale.
Mr William Asare intimated that residents are not allowing NEDco officials to deploy the meters that will help it curtail the act of illegal connections. As a result, he narrated that NEDCo demanded that management gets them a joint Military Police operations for good reasons which was obliged to.
“Because these are the activities that we carry out, we are either assaulted or beaten. The last time, we were chased with cutlass. We went with the Military Police teams for operation which lasted for three days and just in three suburbs of Tamale. We arrested over 200 customers. The estimated power stolen is about GHS462,000 from just the 200 households.”
William Asare
Mr Asare disclosed that after the disconnection of the meters in these households, not more than 10 percent of those customers have proceeded to take their estimated bills to pay their debt. He stated that the residents have found ways to connect back the power which was disconnected.
“The thing is, some households were identified to be stealing power, as such were disconnected and were charged for the estimated power loss but have refused to pay and have reconnected themselves. That is the story in Tamale. It’s the reason why every month we are losing. We are unable to pay for the power purchase that we are being supplied, we are unable to pay GRIDCo for the power that they are transmitting.”
William Asare
Cases are not attended to
The NEDCo staff Chairman intimated that the issue has been made known to the Police authority and that is what resulted in the Police Military Operations. However, he revealed that the cases reported to the Police of such illegal acts are bot attended to.
“This is the situation in Tamale. You go to the Police, you make the case and the Police will go to court, get bench warrant for their arrest because they will not turn up in court. When they are served with the court summons they still won’t come. The arrest never happens.”
William Asare
Mr. Asare posited that the Police will be in the best position to explain the reasons why these offenders are never arrested. He disclosed also that there are numerous bench warrants in court which never gets served.
William Asare further asserted that they are in a situation where stakeholders must be interested in what is happening in Tamale. He explained that the power supply unit is unable to pay for the power supply and noted that if this continues, it will result in difficulty in transmitting power.
“Because the consumers at the end of the day, are not paying for the power being used. We are losing 45 percent of the power we supply just in tamale alone.”
William Asare
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