Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) officials under the Afienya District in the Tema area have arrested 24 persons for illegal connection.
Their activities, which have gone on for some time now, are said to have caused the ECG to lose substantial revenue until a special operation was carried out last Friday.
The exercise sent the ECG staff to communities such as Ashaiman Newtwown, Afienya-Zongo and Mataheko to unravel the criminal acts of the people.
Led by Ing. Daniel Asare, District Manager of Afienya office of ECG who told DGN Online that the operation was conducted successfully with monitoring officers of the company.
According to him, over 30 ECG staff made up of four teams and each team contained six members deployed across the length and breadth of the three communities.
After the successful operation, Mr. Asare said about 40 illegalities including wrong tariffs were detected.
He said 24 people were arrested for bypassing their meters in those areas, indicating that “there is the need to once a while embark on this kind of operation so that we can stop these activities to save the company and the nation from losing a lot of revenue”.
He added that illegal connection was one of the major factors that affected stability of power supply to various parts of the country and called on the public to quickly report those who engaged in such wrongdoings.
“The ECG is also not taking it lightly as we are taking every step to prevent some of these illegal activities and the frequent fire outbreaks,” the District Manager stated.
He noted that all the people have been served with letters and surcharged for billing on the period they have consumed the power wrongly and subsequent payment at the Tema Regional office of the ECG.
In addition, the Afienya District Manager noted that each person will pay a penalty before they are reconnected due to the level of illegal activities they carried out, observing that some of the consumers usually carry out their illegal activities during the night and they will soon be conducting night operation in the district.
“They usually connect unapproved wires and cables to the main power at night and divert power to their homes without passing it through the meter and most of these are done by some electricians in the community.
“Interestingly, do you know we have a special offer of giving some percentage to informants who expose people who do illegal connection. We have noticed that most of the informants are electricians who after bypassing the meters illegally for the customers turnaround to report them to ECG as informant after some few months in order to get some percentage of the money we surcharge the customer,” he stated.
The District Manager therefore cautioned anyone who was involved in such activities to desist from it because they will be exposed later and slap with hefty fines since the operation is unabated.
By Vincent Kubi