Don’t allow devt close to utility facilities - ECG to MMDAs
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has called on metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) not to allow developments close to utility facilities.
It said such developments must be eight meters away from the facilities including high-tension lines.
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The Accra West Regional Manager of the ECG, Ebenezer Ghunney, gave the advice at the region’s maiden meeting with metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) in its operating area.
Collaboration
The meeting was called to look at ways through which the ECG and the MMDCEs could collaborate for effective development.
The region has eight operational districts — Ablekuma, Achimota, Bortianor, Dansoman, Kaneshie, Korle-Bu, Nsawam and Amasaman.
Mr Ghunney said the assemblies should include existing ECG lines in their planning schemes and plans to prevent litigation between staff of the company and the assemblies, adding that they should endeavour to engage stakeholders who were affected by projects initiated in their jurisdictions.
Concern
He gave the concerns of the company as vandalism, theft and damage of street lighting infrastructure and its components.
They include vehicles running into the poles, haphazard digging/excavation by third parties that damage underground cables, among others.
The Accra West ECG boss also expressed concern about installations by individuals/communities/MMDAs/other entities without recourse to ECG and that the safety of people who intruded into its network to install streetlights was also an issue.
Moreover, he said the usage of less energy efficient lamps or high wattage lamps, streetlights without photocells and/or timer switches and individuals manually switching the lights on in the evening but did not put off promptly at daybreak were also of concern to the company.
Levy
Mr Ghunney said street lighting levy was not enough to cover energy consumed while there were virtually no maintenance activities on street lights by MMDAs, saying that “no funds are made available for maintaining the street lighting infrastructure”.
He called on MMDCEs to partner ECG in customer education on streetlight levy and urged them to be vigilant and report vandalism, thefts and damages.
Mr Ghunney said MMDAs should involve the ECG ahead of installing streetlights, educate the citizenry on the need for streetlights to be off during the day and invest in capacity building of electrical staff for installation and maintenance of streetlights.