By: Gloria Edinam Atiase
The Eastern Regional office of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, PURC, received one thousand 519 complaints lodged against the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG, and the Ghana Water Limited, GWL for 2023. Out of the total number of complaints the Commission was able to amicably resolve 1,512 complaints representing 99.53%.
The Eastern Regional Manager of PURC, Jude Aduamuah Addo revealed this at the maiden end of year get together of the Commission held in Koforidua. It brought together stakeholders to take stock of the year’s activities and plan for the future.
Mr Addo noted that his outfit embarked on 99 public engagements in the year and had an audience of 22,241 as part of their efforts to deepen stakeholder confidence in the region.
“A total of 62 communities and 51 organizations were visited during our complaints monitoring and survey,” he noted.
Mr Addo indicated that the GWL through the Commission’s complaint management process recovered an outstanding debt of 420,340 cedis from six of its customers while ECG received 184,120 cedis from three of their customers.
In addition to that, 16 customers of GWL had a total billing adjustment of 657,743 cedis in their favour and six customers of ECG had a total billing adjustment of 35,039 cedis in their favour.
He commended the utility providers for the initiative taken in the year to improve on service delivery adding that reports of theft and tampering with transformers and distribution poles among others do not help in enhanced delivery of service.
While encouraging ECG and GWL to expand and enhance their infrastructure to meet the growing demand, he appealed to the public to preserve these infrastructure to prevent wastage of resources.
“Lately we have had reports of some miscreants tampering with transformers and distribution poles among others, increasing overall losses in the delivery of these services. GWL also faces persistent challenges with ongoing activities of galamsey and needs to spend so much in treatment of water to ensure its safe”.
On the way forward, Mr Addo hinted that the Commission has set 2024 as a year of strategic impact to consolidate gains made and optimize its impact through four key areas namely self improvement, transparency, enforcement and proactiveness.
The Regional Manager said his outfit intends to enhance more collaboration with its stakeholders to protect the interest of consumers and engage more with industries, hoteliers and SMEs next year. He urged customers to pay their bills promptly and channel their concerns to PURC for redress.
The Eastern Regional Chief Manager of GWL, Ing. Asomani Nyarko, urged the PURC to come up with an L.I to add interest on arrears for consumers to deter them in defaulting in paying their bills since it affects their operations.
He urged consumers to use the GWL App to access and pay their bills as well as lodge complaining for action.