A special meter monitoring exercise conducted by the company on Thursday, January 5, 2023, in collaboration with the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service, led to the arrest of some customers, who were committing power stealing offence.

The team, led by the Krobo District Technical Officer (DTO), Edward Annan, visited both the Yilo Krobo and Lower Manya Krobo municipalities, including Sawer at Somanya, Atua, Odumase, Odumase-Korletsom, Agomanya, Agomanya Ablotsi, Hwekper, Kordukpinya and Manam, among others, in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality.

The team discovered that though ECG had installed their prepaid meters for the customers in an exercise conducted last year, some of the customers, with the assistance of alleged local electricians in the two municipalities, had installed postpaid meters again into the system in order to avoid the buying of prepaid credit.

It was also discovered that some customers in Lower Manya Krobo, especially where people with serious offences were arrested, had replaced the ECG installed prepaid meters with fake meters allegedly distributed by the assembly members of the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, at a fee of between GH¢500 and GH¢700.

It was also discovered that some of the customers with the connivance of the alleged local electricians bypassed the meter and connected directly from the main supply to cheat and avoid buying of prepaid credit.

ECG logo

According to Mr Annan, the most serious offence was that the customers who were using the fake meters scanned the ECG logo and put it on the fake meters to look like the real ECG meters.

In August last year, ECG and its customers in the Krobo area had a problem with the payment of bills for postpaid meters, which led to power outage for almost five weeks. That incident led to the installation of prepaid meters in the area.

At the end of the exercise, 10 customers with very serious offences were arrested by the police to appear before court, while 75 were totally disconnected and retired from the meters.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic at the end of the exercise, the acting Manager of ECG for the Krobo District, Christopher Apawu, said the installation of prepaid meters was a nationwide exercise that the company had embarked on, not only in the Krobo District and, therefore, stressed the need for customers to cooperate with the company for quality service delivery.

“We expect our customers to use the prepaid meters we have installed for them and not the postpaid that we took away from the system as well as the fake ones some of them are currently using,” Mr Apawu said.

The Public Relations Officer of ECG, Tema Region, Mary Sakyiwaa Mensah, said the meter monitoring exercise, which is a normal routine for the company, would continue.

She advised customers in the Krobo area who would like to enjoy continuous power supply to avoid power theft, as they would be disconnected and prosecuted to serve as deterrent to others. Therefore, the culprits who were arrested in Lower Manya Krobo would be made to face the law.

Rebuttal

When the Daily Graphic spoke with the Presiding Member of the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly, Wilfred Ayerh Kofi Zhando Tetteh, who doubles as the Assembly Member for the Odumase North Electoral Area, he denied the allegation that assembly members gave out the meters.

He explained that 500 meters were given to the assembly by the Ministry of Energy, out of which 80 were installed by a contractor.

He said ECG wanted the installation to pass through due process such as registration of clients and mapping of facilities where the meters were installed. Mr Tetteh said because of that the rest of the meters were given to ECG and they had not yet been installed.

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“As a Presiding Member of the assembly, I want to challenge any client of ECG who says that he/she was given any meter by an assembly member to expose the one to be arrested. Per what I know as PM, it is never true that assembly members gave out meters to the ECG clients,” Mr Tetteh emphasised.

The groups have been identified as Kloma Hengme (KH) and Kloma Gbi (KG).

They are demanding that the bills, which have accumulated over a period of eight years, are absorbed or be ring-fenced up to July 2021 “to clean the slate for a fresh start”.

This comes a few days after power was restored to the area following a week the area was plunged into darkness.

They argue these proposals are feasible and can get people back to paying bills, especially as ECG for the past years did not supply bills to them.

“The facts remain that between 2018 and today, (during which ECG either failed to serve bills or had difficulty doing so) many tenants changed homes and the difficulty landlords will face in getting these tenants who have moved out to pay such old bills could derail efforts geared toward finding a solution to the challenge at hand.

“In our estimations, these proposals are practical ones they will get people back to paying their bills and solving the problem once and for all. This is more like saying, we can and have to make some sacrifices now, to safeguard the future,” portions of a statement from the groups read.

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The groups have also described as wrong timing the introduction of prepaid meters in the Municipalities, stating it will be used to recoup the outstanding disputed ‘debt’.

“We suggested that considering the peculiar nature of the impasse, people were most likely to read various meanings into the exercise, including some perceiving it as a form of punishment.

“We proposed that ECG temporarily suspends the rollout of the meters and rather focus on first addressing all outstanding issues to create a soft-landing spot for the implementation of the project,” the state added.

Meanwhile, they want the Police to swiftly probe the killing and maiming of some residents in 2019 during a protest against overbilling by ECG.