The Eastern Regional General Manager of the Electricity Company of Ghana, Ing. Michael Baah has indicated that through the efforts of the Revenue Protection Unit, the company retrieved GHC87,893 from detected illegal connections last year.

He made this known during his address to the media at a media reception in Koforidua.

He expressed worry as the company continues to suffer customer and criminal staff illegalities such as meter tampering, bypass, self-reconnection, unauthorised service connection and damaged meters.

Ing. Baah emphasised that the company is seriously working on reducing losses and therefore embarking on a campaign dubbed ‘Name and Shame’, of which names and images of illegal connection culprits will be published in the media and prosecuted as well.

“We, therefore, urge all customers to assist ECG in the fight against illegal connection by reporting any suspected illegal connection activities in their communities to ECG,” he said.

According to him, these aren’t the only problems facing the company in the region. Illegal chainsaw operators and bushfires have also caused series of damages to poles and power lines in the past year.

In spite of these challenges, he said, both the company and customers enjoyed some amount of success in 2017.

He explained that massive investments were injected into providing power for 27,737 customers across the region.

The initiative was implemented in collaboration with the government under the Self Help Electrification Project and ECG’s Rural Electrification Project.

The region also commissioned three customer service centres at Anyinam, Kukurantumi and Abetifi in order to conveniently serve 20,000 customers living in those areas, and was estimated to have cost the company GHC1,747,455.24.

They also installed 20 more private vending stations in strategic areas in the region to provide immediate power accessibility to customers.
The regional manager continued to shed light on the company’s ability to complete 175 development projects.

Two 20 mega volt ampere capacity primary substations were also constructed at Asamankese and Suhum to serve residents of these communities and also serve as alternative power sources for parts of Kibi and Koforidua.

They also spent GHC12,000,000 on transformer injections and network upgrades in system improvement project in the year 2017.

He finally projected various activities for this year, of which some have commenced. “With the help of ECG’s Distribution System Loses Reduction and Associated Network Improvement Project, the region will undertake extension of prepayment metering system in Akim-Oda, Asamankese, Mpraeso and Akim-Tafo.

“Work has already started on the Akim-Oda project and very soon about 200 customers in Akim-Oda will be piloted on the project”.

The company has also embarked on at least 100 minor and major development projects, and two customer service centres in Achiase and Osino will soon be completed and commissioned to further bring quality service to the doorstep of customers.