Apam, June 21, GNA - The Assembly member for Mamfam Electoral area of Apam, Mr. Theophilus Aidoo-Mensah has appealed to the Electricity Company of Ghana to stop arbitrary mass disconnection of power supply to the people of Apam. Mr. Aidoo-Mensah made the appeal at Apam after preventing a group of angry customers of ECG from embarking on a protest march against officials of ECG who were alleged to have taken the law into their own hands to do what pleased them without showing any regard to the regulations on connection printed at the back of customers' bill to guide them. The assembly member, who is the senior accountant of CHRAJ from Winneba where Gomoa District had its district office said the ECG released the bills to the customers at the middle of the month when they knew workers had spent their salaries.

According to him, the bill for April 2008 was distributed to the customers on May 14 and they embarked on mass disconnection on May 27 when they knew workers had not been paid. That of May was distributed on June 11 and they went on mass disconnection on June 20 just nine days after the distribution of the bill. Mr. Aidoo-Mensah urged ECG to come out to tell their customers if the regulations on disconnection had been reviewed and if so they should remove them from the bill. "We agree that the bills must be paid to enable the company to provide quality service to the customers but the method adopted must be given a human face in order not to create inconveniences to the customers and also not to discredit the government," he urged.

The assembly member appealed to ECG to set up a district office in Gomoa or at least post some accounting staff to the district capital to be in charge of collecting the bills. He said the current arrangement when the staff came on Tuesday and Fridays to Apam to collect the bills and carry out disconnection exercises was creating problems for the customers. If a customer was not in town and disconnection was done on Friday, the customer had to spend the weekend in darkness since he or she would not be able to go to Winneba to pay the bill for his or her supply to be reconnected. Mr. Aidoo-Mensah said many household electrically appliances and food items had been destroyed through the arbitrary disconnection, and urged ECG not to infringe on the rights of their customers.