Krapa tasks ECG to address customer concerns

The Minister of State at the Ministry of Energy, Mr Herbert Krapa, has charged the staff and management of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to expedite action on addressing the concerns of customers in order to win back their trust.

He explained that when consumer complaints were not adequately and promptly addressed, it led to frustration and a breakdown in trust between the utility and the public.

Mr Krapa gave the admonition when he paid a working visit to the Customer Services Centre of the ECG at Avenor in Accra yesterday.

He was at the Accra West Office of the ECG to familiarise himself with the working system and as he put it, “to also reiterate the frustrations of customers so that together we can work to improve the process”.

Commendation

He commended the staff and management of ECG for their services so far but added that they needed to work harder to ensure that customers enjoyed reliable and satisfactory services.

“This means from the outset, the services themselves have to meet the standard and expectation of the customer and the customer needs to know how and where to access those services,” he explained.

Mr Krapa, who until his elevation to a minister was a Deputy Minister of Energy and Board Chairman of ECG, said the impact of the 24/7 customer service hotline and the digital platforms for complaints and acquisition on social media apps needed to be felt across the entirety of ECG operational areas.

He called on the management to structure their online service to ensure that it served all categories of customers, including those who were not equipped to use digital platforms.

“One of the most critical issues facing our energy distribution sector is the significant delays in processing customer applications for energy meters. These delays frustrate consumers and hinder our progress towards universal access to electricity,” he stated.

Communication

Mr Krapa said the missing piece in the ECG system was the interface with the customer and how the customer was able to access the service.

He said there was ample proof that the ECG was working hard but they must “work harder to break issues down to ensure that they were able to reach customers a bit more seamlessly and tackle their problems more efficiently and timeously”.

On education, the minister suggested that the ECG could resort to the services of the Information Services Department, community engagement and town hall meetings to bring their services closer to the people.

He expressed worry about what he termed ‘the elephant in the room’, which was a meter acquisition that had a backlog of over one million as a result of overage meters, new customers and faulty ones and charged ECG to expedite the process of deploying more meters.

Touching on the incidents of outdated and malfunctioning metering systems, Mr Krapa acknowledged that these obsolete and malfunctioning meters led to inaccurate billing, consumer dissatisfaction and revenue losses.

Calls Centre

Mr Krapa, who together with his Deputy, Collins Adomako-Mensah, called the ECG Complaints Centre line, commended the staff manning the centre for their prompt response and professionalism.

He, however, charged the management to increase the number of standby fault teams because the feedback that they continually received meant that the fault teams on the ground were surely stretched.

Social

The Director of Customer Services, Dr Belinda Yeboah-Dwamena, urged customers to use the various social media applications for complaints and applications of services, especially energy meters, and not to engage the services of middlemen who were not known or not in the scheme of ECG’s operations.

She said the ECG had stopped attaching meters to electric poles because they were easily stolen. He also cautioned those who tampered with the meters to desist from the act as they would be identified and dealt with ruthlessly.