The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has retrieved some GHC9 million from customers through its revenue protection visibility project launched in August last year.
According to the commercial investigations officer at ECG, Edna Owusu Nyampong, the power company has identified 11,000 illegalities and anomalies perpetrated by 50,000 customers visited in pilot areas as at May 16, 2023. With this, she stated that the Company is doing its best to resolve the issue.
“We have raked in over GHC9 million currently. So, it’s a very useful exercise and it’s bringing in a lot of returns.”
Edna Owusu Nyampong
On his part, acting general manager for customer care in the Ashanti region, Maxwell Dapaah, expressed the need for public support in a bid for the project to succeed. He explained that key objectives of the project are to help in checking the integrity of the meters that have been installed in the system of the Company.
Additionally, he noted that the motive of the project is to also confirm the accuracy of the data that ECG has in relation to the customers that it is serving.
“We expect that our customers right from today will be seeing people all over, coming over to look at the meters that we have installed and also asking for bills that will help us to reconcile the data that we have in relations to the information that we have. So, we expect the kind cooperation of all our customers; we expect that they’ll give access to the staff to our meters so that the work will be done in accordance with the plans that we have in place.”
Maxwell Dapaah
Customers cautioned to refrain from illegal connection
Meanwhile, Ashanti regional director of the revenue protection unit at ECG, Ing Kofi Danso, has cautioned defaulting customers to refrain from self-connection.
“We also want to take the opportunity to inform our customers that after the ‘agenda 20-20’ – that is during the revenue mobilization exercise, we have gotten a lot of complaints on self-reconnection… We just want to inform them that if anybody has done self-reconnection they should remove them.”
Ing Kofi Danso
Earlier this month, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Tema Regional Office, found a total of 6,491 illicit connections activities on its meters in the region from September 2022 to February 2023.
Tema North, Tema South, Nungua, Afienya, Prampram, Ada, Krobo, Juapong, and Ashaiman represent the districts that comprise the Tema ECG Region.
The ECG’s Revenue Protection Unit discovered the unlawful connections during routine metre monitoring that aimed to ensure meter integrity.
Ms. Sakyiwaa Mensah, ECG Tema Regional Public Relations Officer, stated that the greatest number of illicit connections identified was 1,555 in February 2023 alone. She highlighted that the unlawful connections cost a total of GHC 2,891,263.4.
Furthermore, Ms Mensah noted that GHC2,149,148.25 of the amount had been recovered within a six-month period. She noted that routine monitoring was one of ECG’s primary responsibilities, and that the company had the authority to pursue customers who fail to pay for the power they use.
Such people, she emphasized, would be prosecuted for stealing and therefore warned customers to avoid any sort of illicit connection, including meter bypass, meter tampering, and direct connection.
In April this year, the region also disconnected power to a total of 310 customers for engaging in illegal connections and piling up debt.
Engineers of ECG between March 20 to March 31 visited some 2,344 customers comprising individuals, small-scale and large-scale enterprises in the Tema operational area as part of its nationwide revenue mobilization drive to recover debts owed the company.
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