The Central Regional Office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has budgeted to invest GH¢82 million in its operations to expand power supply, stabilise power and enhance its service delivery this year.

Emmanuel Lumor, General Manager for Central Region, said the money would mainly go into the installation and replacement of critical infrastructure such as transformers, meters and automatic switches to augment the region’s power situation.

“We have sent some staff for training, and they are back ready for action,” he told journalists at a press soiree on Monday.

Mr Lumor said the company would install 200 new transformers across the region and two new switching stations at Twifo Praso and Breman Asikuma towards reducing power outages by 80 per cent.

He added that it would replace damaged and rotten electricity poles and install more than 300 automatic switches at various points by the close of the year to localise faults and outages.

“We plan on extending power supply to developed communities and once we have improved power supply in the region, we will have people running into the region to invest and our brothers and sisters will get more work to do,” he added.

Mr Lumor further revealed that the company would replace 180,000 non-smart prepaid metres mostly in Kasoa, Swedru, Cape Coast and Winneba and replace more than 300,000 postpaid credit metres across the region.

It would also invest some of the money in the training of staff and reposition them at various points to respond timeously to customer complaints.

The ECG Regional General Manager said the company in 2023 installed 210 transformers, replaced 420 rotten poles, and extended power supply to about 174 areas and worked to reduce low voltage in other areas.

A total of 27,000 faulty postpaid metres and 25,000 non-smart prepaid metres would be replaced with smart prepaid meters to enable customers transact business at their convenience, he added.

The company visited about 80 per cent of customers to know their challenges and solicited their views on how to improve upon their services, he said.

“We carried out maintenance works throughout the region to ensure stable power and trained staff on modern customer care service to improve service delivery in line modern business transactions.

“By undertaking these projects, we have reduced our customer complaints to 60 per cent as compared to the previous years,” he said.

Despite the successes, Mr Lumor said issues such as fake metres, illegal connections and non-payment of bills remained some of the major challenges for the company in the region.

He disclosed that the company in 2023 identified some 31,000 fake metres across the region for which it surcharged the owners and planned with them for replacement after payment.

Even though he could not quantify how much had been lost to the fake metres, he intimated that it had so far issued an estimated bill of six million cedis to the culprits and cautioned that every metre must be acquired from the ECG.

He discouraged the public against the procurement of metres from unauthorised persons and served notice that the ECG would deal legally with culprits of such transactions if caught.

For illegal connection, Mr Lumor said it had discovered numerous cases and dragged some of the perpetrators to court with some of the cases awaiting judgements.

He warned that the company would deal ruthlessly with perpetrators because such deals amounted to power theft and denied the company of substantial revenue.