The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has recovered an amount of GH₵1,094,851.69 from defaulting customers and through detected illegal connections in the Central and Eastern regions.
The amount includes GH₵145,735.69 realised from customers in the Kasoa North District of the Central Region and GH₵949,116 retrieved from the Eastern Region.
Central Region
In the Central Region, the amount was realised as a result of a revenue mobilisation exercise embarked upon by the company, in collaboration with its Revenue Protection Unit (RPU) in areas such as Papase, Ofankor, Ashalaja and Tipper Junction.
The Revenue Protection Manager, Kow Ampah, who disclosed this to the Eveningmailgh.com said: “this exercise commenced a fortnight ago as part of efforts to vigorously improve revenue mobilisation and data cleaning. It also syncs with the vision of the Managing Director, Kwame Agyeman-Budu, to drastically clamp down on illegal connections.”
According to him, 121 accounts were disconnected out of a total of 172 customers visited.
He disclosed that seven customers were found to be involved in illegal connections, such as meter bypass and direct connections. He said the power lost due to illegal connection was estimated at 12,600kWh. He disclosed that the company surcharged the seven arrested to pay for the loss.
The Regional General Manager, Ing Ebenezer Ghunney, called on customers who engage in illegal connections to desist from such acts which deprive the company of the revenue needed to cover energy purchases and undertake projects to improve service delivery.
Eastern Region
In the Eastern Region, the Acting Revenue Protection Manager, Mr Sylvester Ofosu Amankwaah, confirmed during a press conference that customers who were caught engaging in illegal connection in the region include hotel operators, restaurant owners, cold store operators, drinking pubs owners, individuals and some media houses.
He explained that the types of illegal connections detected include meter tampering, meter bypass, illegal self-reconnection and illegal direct connection.
According to Mr Ofosu Amankwaah, the Revenue Protection Unit of the ECG in the region, on their monitoring exercise, visited 4,014 meters last year. They detected 16 unauthorised service connections, two illegal direct connections, 29 meters tampered, 176 faulty meters and 111 meters on wrong tariff class.
“Meters that were identified to be on wrong tariff classes were corrected and the identified faulty meters replaced,” he added.
Mr Ofosu Amankwaah stated that through the monitoring exercise, ECG was able to recover about 1,196,681KWh units of electricity which were lost through illegal connections. He added that the total units recovered translate into GH₡1,203,878 of which an amount of GH₡949,116 has been retrieved from customers.
The Regional General Manager of ECG, Ing Michael Baah, disclosed that the regional office of ECG has initiated series of revenue protection activities aimed at unearthing illegalities in the system, and reducing power losses due to power theft.
“If we are able to reduce commercial losses, we could achieve the system losses benchmark of 20 per cent by the end of the year 2020,” he said.
