The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has expressed hope in raising about ¢5 billion revenue from its revenue mobilization, which is expected to begin from next Monday, March 20, 2023 to April 20, 2023 across the country.
The exercise, which will be carried out nationwide will focus on all categories of customers in arrears including State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and will be monitored by special teams from the power distribution company.
According to the ECG, its Head Office, Regional and District Offices will be temporarily closed during the period, except for Customer Service Centers to allow top management of the utility company partake in the month long exercise.
The External Communications Manager at ECG, Laila Abubakari, speaking on the exercise said:
“We are embarking on this revenue mobilization because ECG is being owed a lot, especially, in the last few months where we encountered some problems with our system.”
Laila Abubakari
Madam Abubakari averred that the company had a lot of its funds locked up, hence their embarking on the one-month long exercise to recoup them.
“…We are trying as much as possible to encourage our customers to pay their bills, especially, those who are post-paid because for the prepaid, we don’t have any problem, because, as it is, you buy and then we get our money. But for those who are post-paid and from the special load tariff company, they, have to pay some bills.
“So we are being very proactive and we’ve requested that the top management walk the talk. So we are closing down our Head Office and most of our Regional Offices so that the General Managers, the Directors, can specifically go and collect the monies from these people who owe us.”
Laila Abubakari
ECG goes on the field with its Top-level officials
Unlike its usual tradition of deploying the revenue agents and middle men to go in for the funds, Laila explained why the company has gone in for the new approach of going with the top management for these monies. This was her reason:
“We know that there has been an issue where sometimes, State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) take their time in paying some of their bills and so this time, we are hoping that when they see some of our Directors; our Managing Directors, General Manager, they will know how serious we are, because, we have to collect the money to be able to help in the whole agenda for recovering the economy.
“And so if these monies remain with these people, it will be a problem generally for the whole expenditure that we have for the year.”
Laila Abubakari
This, Laila said, emphasizing on the need for the company to be proactive in its exercise and actually physically visit enterprises, companies, homes and people who owe it, so as to retrieve its monies.
Responding to how much ECG expects to recover after the one-month exercise it intends embarking on, the External Communications Manager of the company said:
“We are being owed about ¢5 billion and we are looking at 100% collection; that is the target.
“The MD has set the target so high because the Board is tasking him to collect all the money in 30 days and so our target is a 100%. And so we are hoping that by the end of the exercise, which is going to be on the 20th of April, we would have collected ¢5 billion or even more.”
Laila Abubakari
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