Of the utility service providers, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has an outstanding status, its other counterparts dependent upon it for survival.
Managing the power generated by the relevant agency, it is one utility service provider which has incessantly endured the fallouts of thievery by uncaring and irresponsible persons across the country.
The revenue the agency loses annually is alarming and enough to cripple it yet, because of the importance of electricity in our everyday lives, humanness guides it in its bid to recover the monies in the hands of irresponsible consumers.
The company now has a new managing director in the person of Samuel Dubik Mahama, a man who is not new to the electricity managing regime in the country.
Having already hosted his first press engagement with the media, he has left nobody in doubt about his objective of ensuring the financial viability of the company.
The issue of energy in our everyday lives cannot be overemphasised. We all saw what happened during the erstwhile regime of the NDC when erratic power supply almost brought the country to its knees.
Considering the importance of energy therefore, the managing director’s project of auditing meters and the general power consumption in the country to establish the legality or otherwise of this, is a welcome template.
Every chief executive seeking to keep the companies they head financially buoyant would do just that especially when the books post the anomalies clearly.
It is lamentable that some consumers, and they are said to be many, would shortchange the utility company and yet demand constant supply of electricity.
Let all responsible citizens join hands with the company to ensure that electricity thieves are fished out and punished according to the law.
There should be a closure to this negative tendency on the part of some of us. In some sprawling and congested suburbs of Accra, we have information that meter readers are subjected to harassment and threats when they come to do their work. This is appalling and despicable.
It is unthinkable that such thieves continue to consume electricity even when they are in arrears in their payment for the utility supplied them.
We urge the electricity company to walk its talk of embarking upon a project to reverse the stealing of electricity and to clean the dark spots in its accounting books.
There is no reason why the electricity company should continue to be in this avoidable predicament. Keeping this critical utility provider financial buoyant so it can continue to discharge its mandate is a task which behooves all citizens to ensure.
We can all contribute towards this goal by paying our bills regularly and reporting the criminals for the necessary actions to be initiated against them.
Our contribution can also take the form of exposing the thieves when we find them.
We should also cooperate with the staff of the ECG when they embark upon the operation announced by the MD during his media engagement last Wednesday.
Let us support the ECG to serve us even better considering also the fact that we are not even paying realistic charges for the services they provide, courtesy of government intervention.