Digitalisation of payment for electricity in Ghana has increased monthly collection from GH¢450 million to over GH¢1 billion, the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said. This translates into over GH550 million extra revenue ECG is collecting monthly.
According to the Vice President, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was constantly making monthly collection of GH¢450 million, which triggered a probe.
He said the government then decided to digitalise the electricity payment, but the move also hit a snag, as ransomware was installed on the system, collapsing the whole system.
Dr. Bawumia was speaking at the 14th Commonwealth Regional Conference and Annual General Meeting of Heads of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Africa, being held in Accra since Monday.
The Vice President said it took the intervention of National Security to identify the computer that had the ransomware, with further probes revealing that some staff at the ECG IT department sabotaged the system by installing the ransomware.
“They just kept it at GH¢450 million every month. So, I said we need to send in a team to digitalise the new collection of the Electricity Company of Ghana, so we sent in a team and we began the process of digitalisation.
“Can you believe that workers within the system sabotaged it? They put ransomware into the whole system. And the system essentially collapsed. We had to send in National Security to eventually find that it was some of the staff at the IT department who were culpable.
“And we found the computer which the ransomware was injected in the system. It took us awhile to restore the system. They asked for a ransom to actually allow for this to work. Can you imagine? That we should pay, they submitted a bill that we should pay for the system to work.
“Anyway, they were arrested. And we restored the system and we digitised the system and we said that no more cash payments for electricity in Ghana. You only pay by your mobile money, electronic bank transfers. So that is now the case. Can you believe that from GH¢450 million a month, collections have now gone to over a billion cedis a month?”
ARREST
In October 2022, some ECG customers in parts of the Volta Region, Takoradi, Tema, Cape Coast, Kasoa, Winneba, Swedru, Koforidua, Nkawkaw and Tafo were unable to buy electricity credit due to metering system downtime.
However, in March 2023, following investigations some personnel at the IT department of ECG were picked up by state security in connection with the metre glitch.
BLOCKCHAIN TECH
Addressing the anti-corruption conference on Thursday, May 9, 2024 Dr. Bawumia indicated that Ghana was moving towards blockchain technology, as it makes it possible to discover any and all changes made to digital data.
He told the conference that the adoption of blockchain technology by the government is to ensure that all data and transactions in the government space are transparent and tamper-proof.
He said that about 99% of all government agencies (1507 out of 1517) have been onboarded onto the government digital platform Ghana.gov, adding that the Ghana.Gov has collected GH¢201 billion for government so far.
“So the blockchain practically blocks corruption, and this is where we are headed, so that you can track and trace all transactions across the government space, and this is a very effective tool.
“Our goal is to make Ghana the first blockchain-powered government in Africa and one of the few in the world. We believe we can be the first in Africa to do so,” he declared.
CORRUPTION EFFECT
The presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Dr. Bawumia, addressing participants of the anti-corruption conference, bemoaned the devastating effect of corruption on Africa.
He remarked that experts estimate that the continent has lost at least one trillion US dollars over the past five years through corruption and illicit financial flows.
Adding to that, a significant percentage of people who have contact with a public official will pay a bribe or will be asked to.
Dr. Bawumia called for more investment in the acquisition of digital tools to fight the corruption eco-system as a whole, arguing that “corruption is costing us a huge amount of money and depriving us of the lives we deserve.”
