Abraham Anokye Abebrese (L) addressing the media
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has given all customers a one-month amnesty to rectify all anomalies with their meters ahead of an impending audit.
According to ECG, the audit will help to reduce commercial losses once and for all, clean the system of any electrical illegalities, and help improve the revenue of the company.
ECG, therefore, called on customers who have not been receiving bills, have prepaid customers but do not purchase electricity credit, customers with faulty meters,
those who have tampered with their meters, and all those engaged in any form of illegality, to willingly own up within the one-month moratorium instituted by the company.
According to the power distribution company, any customer caught engaged in illegality after the one-month moratorium will be dealt with by the law.
Addressing the media in Takoradi the Director of Customer services for ECG, Abraham Anokye Abebrese said over the years, the biggest bane of ECG has been its loss which militates against the viability of the company.
He mentioned that generally, losses are inherent in every electricity business all over the world.
“It’s however, the quantum of our loses which is unacceptable”
“Hence our efforts to reduce the quantum of commercial loses once and for all by getting rid of all electrical illegalities to improve the revenue mobilization”, he added.
He explained that losses in the electricity business are in two components which included technical and commercial losses.
He pointed out that it is the commercial losses that the company has control over and mentioned some of them as uncaptured metres.
“This is where customers use metres which are not captured in our system and for that matter they don’t pay for the electricity they use”, he explained.
He indicated that faulty metres and customers who tamper with metres so that they do not pay for the full usage of electricity, also account for commercial losses.
“There is also meter by-passing where customers deliberately by-pass meters so that they will not record the true power consumption”.
“We are therefore encouraging customers with these anomalies on their meters to come out willingly to sort out the issues from June 7 to July 6, 2022, to avoid prosecution”, he stressed.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi