General News of Thursday, 18 May 2017

Source: mynewsgh.com

US Embassy exposes ECG over accrued electricity bills

Robert Jackson is US Ambassador to Ghana Robert Jackson is US Ambassador to Ghana

The US Embassy in Ghana has exposed Ghana’s power distributor, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) over claims the latter is not indebted to them.

Earlier this week the Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko at a policy summit was quoted as saying the US Embassy has been chasing the officials of the ECG for the past two to bring them their actual bill for power consumed in order to pay but they have not been successful.

He also cited instances where telecommunication giants MTN, who are indebted to the company, have had difficulty getting the actual cost of power consumed to pay but they were unsuccessful.

“MTN called me and said ‘we owe ECG GH¢35 million. We are trying to pay. We are waiting for wire instructions. And we’ve been waiting for one month. So I went to ECG and I asked them. What’s going on? And they said ‘Oh the person who is supposed to issue the instructions is gone on leave’….And they have as many as 6500 staff and still growing.”

“I live in Krobo Odumase, there are places there where ECG billed an electrician with just a bulb in his kiosk for GH¢4,000 a month. And the impudence on the part of ECG is they want to go and disconnect that person. ECG has to change.”

But the ECG in response stated categorically that the American Embassy was not indebted to them as the Minister claimed insisting the Embassy has settled its indebtedness.

This however prompted officials of the Embassy to tweet about the matter;