The Acting Director-General of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Mr Julius Kpekpena, has refuted claims that ECG is overcharging customers for electricity consumption.
He said investigations conducted by the company did not support that assertion.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Monday, Mr Kpekpena explained that the study conducted by the ECG rather revealed that there was increase in power consumption by consumers and not power overcharging by his outfit.
He said that although the company communicated tariff changes to prepaid meters, some meters failed to receive the updates due to dead zones in the country’s mobile telephony system.
That, he noted, led to differences in tariffs paid by customers.
“On the overcharging of credits, let me say here categorically that no consumer has been overcharged for the electricity they consumed. However, it is not untrue that consumers saw a sharp jump in the rate at which the credit is consumed,” Mr Kpekpena said.
“For our prepaid meters, when we change tariff, we have to communicate that tariff to the meter. And you know we have a lot of dead zones in our mobile telephony system. So, we broadcast the tariff, and the meters are to receive this tariff. But some meters don’t receive the tariff,” he added.
“When that happens, we go around to manually upload to each meter a new tariff. When we investigated, we realised that some of our old and obsolete meters that we are replacing were on 2021 tariff,” he explained.
According to him, customers whose meters had not been updated were effectively underpaying, and once the new tariffs were applied, it was expected that they would see an immediate increase in the rate of credit consumption.
Mr Kpekpena further noted that ECG was recording improved revenue generation due to enhanced operational systems.
“Our billing system is getting better and better each and every day. Our customers who are not paying or who were not being billed are now being captured. So, our commercial operation is improving,” he said.
He added that the company’s operations have become more transparent, with revenue now managed through a cash waterfall mechanism administered by the National Energy Security Committee and led by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC).
Additionally, he highlighted the role of social media platforms, including a temporary WhatsApp account being developed by the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition, in helping customers report power outages.
He also noted that the ECG Power App can now be used for such reports.
Mr Kpekpena clarified that occasional power fluctuations are caused by automated devices installed on power lines, not by ECG personnel.
“We also have devices on the line that cuts the power off, waits for a certain period that we set and then takes the power back, and when it goes off, it sees it as a permanent fault and cuts it off completely,” he said.
BY BENJAMIN ARCTON-TETTEY
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