Herbert Krapa
The Minister of State at the Ministry of Energy, Herbert Krapa, has charged the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to ensure that the concerns of its customers are addressed within hours and not days.
He said a lot of the staff were executing their roles excellently and must be commended, however, those whose actions and inactions as well as substandard delivery affect the quality of work must be called out “so that we are not lumping them together as a whole as ECG.”
Mr. Krapa gave the charge when he addressed staff, management and other stakeholders of the ECG at its Customer Services Centre within the Industrial Area, Avenor in Accra.
He was at the Accra West Office of the ECG to familiarise himself with the working system and as he put it “to also reiterate the frustrations of customers so that together we can work to improve the process.”
Calls
During the interactions, Mr. Krapa and his Deputy, Collins Adomako-Mensah, called the ECG complaint centre, and enthused by the promptness and professionalism of the staff, the minister said such show of competence and dedication to duty must be commended and rewarded.
The minister’s entourage included Chief Director, Wilhelmina Asamoah; Director Power, Solomon Adjettey, and Director PPBME, Isaac Nsarko Biney.
“People should take responsibility for their failures, their inactions and substandard delivery so that we don’t lump all together as a whole as ECG. The wrong thing should be sanctioned and those who do the right thing should be motivated,” he added.
Education
He charged the company to use both traditional and modern media, including the Information Services Department public address vans and public interactions like town hall meetings to educate and create awareness about their services to the ordinary Ghanaian in the nooks and crannies of the country.
Mr. Krapa indicated that there was the need to increase the number of fault teams who go round to fix faults, because it is one thing for people to have the medium to complain but the real issue is ECG being able to have enough technical people on ground, ready and available to tackle the problems promptly.
He also charged the ECG to concentrate more teams in the areas where the data shows a lot of complaints.
The minister said there was increasing number of people complaining about acquisition of meters, adding that he was aware of the efforts by the company to increase the meter deployment.
He said one of the processes that required expedited action was the backlog of meter applications that has increased to an unsustainable level (about a million), a clear indication that the current systems are overwhelmed and need urgent attention.
Finance
Touching on financial constraint, Mr. Krapa said his ministry was working together with the Ministry of Finance to ensure that the ECG was assisted to roll out more meters.
Complaints
Mr. Krapa stated that consumer complaints are not being adequately addressed, leading to frustration and a breakdown in trust between the utility and the public, noting that “the impact of the 24/7 customer service hotline and an online portal to manage complaints needs to be felt across the entirety of ECG operational areas.”
“The activities of middlemen, also known as “goro boys,” in the meter application and acquisition process have further complicated the issue, leading to extortion and delays. ECG needs to intensify the campaign to eliminate middlemen by providing direct services to consumers and penalising any staff collaborating with these individuals,” he added.
Mr. Krapa described energy theft as a significant problem that undermines ECG’s revenue collection and impacts the quality of service provided, and called for measures to deal decisively with the problem.
Communication
Mr. Krapa indicated that judging from the performances and output of the technical staff and engineers at the ECG, their “technical capacity is not lacking” however, the missing piece was the interface with the customer and how the customer was able to access the service.
He indicated that there was ample proof that the ECG was working hard, but they must “work harder to break issues down to ensure that they were able to reach customers a bit more seamlessly and tackle their problems more efficiently and timeously.”
By Prince Fiifi Yorke