Power theft: NEDCo arrests 331 persons in Upper East, North-East
Three hundred and thirty-one persons have been arrested by the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) in the Upper East and North-East regions for power theft, the Billing and Revenue Protection Officer, William K. Asare, has disclosed.
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He said the arrested persons connected to the national grid without recourse to NEDCo, while others had intentionally tampered with their meters to either pay less bills or pay no monthly bills at all to the company.
Mr Asare, who was speaking to the media on the successes of the month-long revenue mobilisation exercise within its operational areas, said the power theft was detected when officials of NEDCo visited the homes and workplaces of the customers.
He noted that the arrested persons were served with letters together with their bills for the power used saying “some of the affected customers have duly paid their bills while others are yet to pay”.
“Those customers who are yet to pay the bills served to them for illegally connecting power to their various establishments will be arraigned before court to face the full rigours of the law,” Mr Asare stated.
Amount retrieved
Touching on the amount retrieved as part of the revenue mobilisation exercise, he noted that more than GH¢7.9 million had been collected from customers out of a total of GH¢125 million.
He stated that “for us we are excited with regards to the debts collected so far, which cover post-paid bills,” noting “averagely, post-paid bills amount to GH¢5.8 million monthly; so if within this period, NEDCo has been able to collect such an amount, then it is a good move”.
He explained further that the exercise would be sustained by the company, so that all current bills and arrears owed by customers would be collected to sustain the operations of the company and to serve customers better.
Additionally, he noted that over the period of the exercise, a total of 6,321 customers owing various sums of money were disconnected, and that “many of the affected customers have since paid part of their debts, which paved the way for their reconnection”.
“The good news is that, we have engaged several institutions that hitherto did not pay their bills, especially the health institutions which have committed to pay their current bills and signed payment agreements to pay their arrears as well”.
Bawku crisis
The Upper East Area NEDCo Engineer, Ishmael Ben Kwofie, lamented that the crisis in Bawku had negatively affected revenue mobilisation in the area since officials were unable to collect bills due to increased insecurity.
He noted that apart from Bolgatanga, the company’s bread basket was the Bawku Municipality, saying “sadly, for the past two years since the conflict resurfaced, NEDCo has not been able to mobilise anything in terms of revenue due to the situation there”.
That notwithstanding, he noted that NEDCo had not failed to improve the services in the area for the benefit of the customers, stressing, “currently, we are injecting four new transformers in the Bawku area to improve service delivery to power users”.
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