Former Director of Communication at the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) Nana Yaa Akyempim Jantuah has expressed shock at the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) huge loss and arrears.
According to Nana Yaa Jantuah, the accumulated debt of Ghc 5.6 billion arrears owed to the ECG is alarming because the company has just published a new increase in tariffs.
In an interview with Samuel Eshun on Happy 98.9 FM’s “Epa Hoa Daben” socio-political talk show, she argued that the new tariffs are often introduced to make up for ECG’s losses.
“There’s no way the ECG should be owed this much because they even just published new tariffs. Sometimes these new increase in tariffs are done to make up for loses that’s the commercial and technical loses. Commercial loses are not acceptable because when someone is doing their job well, ECG needs to be getting their money. Technical loses are sometimes leakages here and there but for commercial loses we don’t need to encourage them.”
Nana Yaa Jantuah also noted that ECG had reported a 70% penetration rate with prepaid meters, which means that there should be a lot of money available since the system is automatic and reflects payments made.
She questioned why ECG would still be chasing money when there is a high percentage of prepaid meters. She said, “If it’s 70%, that means there should be a lot of money available since first of all it’s automatic. When someone pays for the service it reflects. We use cards, momo, app and other means. So why should you accumulate Ghc 5.6b arrears? That’s a lot and why should that just be owed to ECG that means someone is sleeping on the job.”
Nana Yaa Jantuah further expressed her concern about the burden of increased tariffs on consumers, particularly when ECG has such huge arrears. She urged that if ECG can recover these arrears, tariffs should be reduced to lessen the burden on consumers.
“So you increase tariffs for ECG while they have this huge arrears owed them then you’re still be burdening the consumer. If all these tariffs are collected how much will be used to reduce our tariffs because they are so expensive. How did this happen in the first place,” she added.
This comes after ECG commenced a series of activities in a bid to recover over GH¢5 billion of debt owed by both private and state institutions.
The exercise began on Monday, March 20, 2023, after ECG announced the closure of its main offices except for customer support departments, to embark on a one-month-long exercise.
The power distributor says it is optimistic of recovering “100% of the entire GHȼ5.7 billion at the end of the nationwide exercise” after GHȼ18.5 million owed was recovered from three state institutions notably, Parliament, the Ghana Airport Company Limited and the Ghana Broadcasting Company – GBC.