The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) says it is fully committed to clamping down on power theft and any other form of illegality that adversely affects the operations of the company. The company has, therefore, issued a month’s moratorium to all customers who have defaulted on the payment of bills, as well as those who have engaged in any form of illegality, to regularise their use of power or face severe sanctions.
The Director of Customer Services, Mr. Abraham Anokye Abebrese, who made this known to the media in the Central Region, indicated that the moratorium, which began on June 7, would end on July 8.
Mr. Anokye indicated that the purpose of the moratorium was to afford customers who had issues regarding their bills, faulty meters, and those who were illegally using electricity, to have the situation rectified. Explaining further, he stated that power theft was not just a major bane which militated against the viability of the company, but it also affected its operations adversely.
According to him, the moratorium was a precursor to a planned nationwide exercise to clean the system off illegalities relating to the use of electricity power to reduce commercial losses.
He, therefore, implored all customers with “uncaptured meters, billing anomalies, meter tampering, faulty meters, meter bypassing” to quickly report to the company during the period.
“Customers with any of the issues stated above should visit any of our districts or customer service offices to report and they would be given a report slip, which would enable ECG to follow up to rectify the situation,” he said.
After moratorium deadline
He warned that the National Revenue Mobilisation Taskforce (NRMT) would resume full operations immediately after the deadline for the moratorium, disclosing that any customer who refused to report any of the aforementioned anomalies during the period of the moratorium would not be spared by the Taskforce when caught.
Meeting PURC benchmark
The Director of Customer Services disclosed that though the losses were inherent in every electricity distribution business all over the world, the ECG’s quantum of loss was not acceptable.
He explained that the average loss of power by the ECG stood between a staggering 28 and 29 percent, while the benchmark of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for ECG stood at 22.6%.
Mr. Abebrese assured that the ECG was fully committed to ensuring that all loopholes that contributed to the company’s commercial losses would be blocked.
This, according to him, would enable the company to improve on its operations, and also meet the benchmark as set by the PURC.
