Ing Emmanuel Akinie, Accra West ECG General Manager.
The Accra West Region of the Electricity Company of Ghana Ltd. (ECG), has recovered about GH¢675,313.00 from 94 customers who were found to have engaged in various forms of illegal connections.
Some illegalities the customers engaged in included metre bypasses, metre tampering, unauthorised service connections and direct connections.
The customers were identified during ECG’s one-week nationwide revenue mobilization exercise from May 26 to June 2, 2023.
The exercise, according to ECG is designed to retrieve all debts owed it, and to monitor the health of its metre installations in customers’ facilities.
The Accra West Region during the one-week exercise retrieved stolen 535,822KWh of electricity translating to about GH¢675,313.00.
The Accra West General Manager, Ing Emmanuel Akinie, at the end of the exercise praised the vigilance of the field team in uncovering the illegalities.
He said the illegalities identified were sophisticated, which shows the determination of some customers to deny the company of revenue from the electricity they use.
“We have disconnected power to these customers, surcharged them for the electricity they used and a penalty fee for engaging in the illegalities and they will be prosecuted” Ing. Akinie stated.
He also revealed that ECG is investing heavily in technology to help identify customers who engage in illegalities.
“We have introduced some smart metre solutions on pilot basis, which give us real time updates of what is happening on a customer premises. It signals our office once the metre-case is opened, bypassed or tampered with” he said.
Ing. Akinie signaled plans to roll out more of such smart metere to aid in the fight against illegalities.
The Accra West region has eight operational districts. These are Ablekuma, Achimota, Amasaman, Bortianor, Dansoman, Kaneshie, Korlebu and Nsawam.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak