ECG and new Meter Fatigue

By Edzorna Francis Mensah, a Journalist

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), is in breach of its mandate to distribute standardised electric meters to deserving applicants within Ghana as a public Service Establishment.

This mandate many would agree the ECG has to be able to execute to the satisfaction of its customers. In July 1987, the Volta River Authority set up the Northern Electricity Department(NED), which took over from ECG the responsibility of the management of electric power distribution in Brong-Ahafo, Northern, Upper East, and Upper West Regions in order to reduce the unpretentious pressures from customers as well as to create an extra room for the company to effectively and competently manage and take full control over operations.

The creation of NEDCo was supposed to have made the Company more responsible to Ghanaians as their workload was redefined to distribute electricity to only nine Operational Regions in the southern part of Ghana namely, Accra East and West, Tema, Eastern, Central, Volta, Western and Ashanti regions. This further decentralized into eighty-eight Operational Districts just to manage the stress on ECG at its Operational Regions.

All these administrative measures were put in place to make the company accountable to its customers and deliver on its core mandate, yet ECG does not see the need to give out meters to potential customers who demonstrated enough credibility to pay bills. To start with, an electricity meter is a device that measures the amount of electric energy consumed by a residence, a business, or an electrically powered device. Without it, a house or an organization cannot function. This clearly shows the importance of the services of the electricity company of Ghana. Despite this, however, ECG sees it as a luxury to provide power to those who need it. ECG is mandated to use energy meters installed at customers’ premises to measure electricity delivered to their customers for billing purposes to avert power theft. In Ghana, except otherwise provided by law, tapping from the ECG service pole or low tension to one’s house or office constitutes a criminal act, punishable by law.

According to the ECG, it has no meter to provide to the long list of applicants nationwide because they are in short supply. The sad aspect is that middlemen, popularly known as ‘goro boys,’ are able to provide meters to customers who are willing to pay more. The question then is; if ECG does not have meters to distribute to applicants, where do the ‘goro boys’ get their supply from? One has to pay as much as ¢1,500.00 (one thousand five hundred) to a ‘goro boy’ in order to get a meter which should cost one fifty cedis.

As a public institution with a Board of Directors who have vowed to deliver quality services, this development cast a doubt on that mandate. The company obviously has no clue whatsoever as to how people get meters, or perhaps, it has never recognized the fact that meter distribution to households and to businesses has left their custody long ago and into the hands of unscrupulous persons who are reaping innocent Ghanaians off.

Authorities and stakeholders in the power supply chain must sit up and work hard to avert this trend.

Otherwise, the corruption that has overwhelmed the company to the extent that some staff conspired with private people to import the meters and sell them to the public to the detriment of the state will collapse the company and in the long run plunge the country into a load shedding regime that can never be averted.