As part of its efforts to combat power theft and address system losses, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will begin a meter auditing exercise on Monday, 1 August 2022.
The ECG had earlier formed a task force to detain and prosecute anyone involved in criminal activity.
According to the Managing Director, Samuel Dubik Mahama, the task force would, among others, check the health of the meters and the readings of meters and distribution transformers.
He said the task force would be appropriately clothed, well equipped, and escorted by police officers.
“We will visit each and every home to see which ones are stealing power. We have engaged the police CID, and they have equipped us with enough officers for the teams. Anybody caught stealing power will be charged with the offence of stealing. Such offences come with a hefty punishment by a jail term,” he noted.
Utility court
The ECG MD stressed that the exercise would not be one-off but would be sustained to recover their losses.
“ECG is in debt, and to come out of its debt situation, we must find those taking power and are not paying,” he said.
He advised its customers to desist from preventing the task force from entering their homes and urged the task force to show respect to the customers.
Moratorium
On 7 June 2022, the company issued a one-month moratorium to power consumers to voluntarily report all faulty meters, illegal connections, and other challenges for redress.
Mr. Mahama said customers who failed to report their issues during the grace period, which ended on 20 July 2022, would be affected by the exercise and have their service cable removed.
He noted that the company was losing millions of dollars in revenue due to illegalities in power consumption and, therefore, would not relent in efforts to recover its losses.
“The meter audit is going to be vigorous, there will be no respecter of persons, and there will be a name and shame portion of this exercise,” he noted.
He indicated that the task force had the discretion to take the service pole of customers found culpable.
Faulty meters
Mr. Mahama said during the grace period, approximately 116,000 people voluntarily showed up with all forms of illegal connections, whereas the number of faulty meters was almost 12,000.
“After granting the moratorium, we found out that there were over 100,000 issues which we intend to solve one by one.
Plans are also far advanced to provide new meters and resolve faulty ones. This means that nobody has an excuse.
“Also, those who reported to our offices were given a chit so they would be exempted from the exercise,” he told Graphic.
Although he did not give an exact amount of revenue accrued during the moratorium, Mr. Mahama noted that the company’s revenue had shot up in the past two weeks.