ECG goes after power thieves
The Electricity Company of Ghana has said it had intensified an exercise intended to reduce energy theft, as well as its commercial losses.
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The exercise is also intended to ensure revenue generation and enhance service delivery and curb the company’s commercial losses.
Although the move started last year as part of ECG’s revenue moblisation exercise, it has been scaled up and will see members of the ECG task force visiting every installation nationwide, either prepaid or postpaid to thoroughly assess the front and back sides of ECG meters to verify its integrity.
The Director, Communication of the ECG, William Boateng in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said the exercise was the outcome of a review of its activities after digitising its technical operations.
“The digital dashboard has given us a better picture of the number of households using power served by the ECG and how many people are paying for the power they consume.
“With this latest exercise, our technical men will do a thorough assessment of all our meter installations and authenticate the power it consumes.
Mr Boateng hinted that once the installation was checked, the dashboard would capture and indicate, thus there would be no room for manipulation, even by any member of the task force who may fall to any coercion by customers.
“This latest exercise, which will be undertaken all year long, would help us identify those who are using other means to use power fraudulently, those who are under-paying for the power consumed and all other issues resulting in energy theft and commercial losses to the company,” he stressed.
Mr Boateng said the exercise was backed by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission’s LI 2413(2020) which empowers the ECG to access all its installations anywhere, and at any time.
He warned that anyone who would attempt to physically prevent any member of the deployed task force from exercising this legal mandate risks having their power disconnected.
He stated that every member of the task force has a company ID and was required to provide it as proof of his mandate.
“However, if customers have any doubts about the authenticity of the ID, they can call the customer care lines at the call centre on 030-2611-611 dedicated to this service for prompt verification and clearance,” Mr Boateng stated.
He also said as part of the arrangement to ensure that members of the task force and by extension all other members of staff carried out their roles professionally and ethically, the customer care hotlines had also been activated for the general public to lodge all complaints.
He explained,” We have built a niche for our customer care and relations and we want to be more efficient in that regard as our customers are the backbone of our business.”
Efficiency
The director, communications, who said he was leading a team for the exercise in the Western Region, explained that apart from reducing the company’s commercial losses through power theft, the exercise was also part of the company’s new outlook to “do business with the best practice in the industry as was done in many progress societies.”
“ECG has moved from the way it operated in the past and has become very business minded.
“Like many power distributors in progressive societies, we want to minimise both our operational and commercial losses and become more efficient so it would inure to the benefit of efficient service.
We can no longer do things as was done in the pre-digital era,” he stressed.