The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) says it has virtually resolved challenges that bedeviled its Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) payment system, which troubled many customers in Korle-bu, Dansoman, Kaneshie and Achimota.

Samuel Boakye-Appiah, Managing Director of ECG, speaking at a press conference Friday in Accra, apologized for the inconvenience caused customers, particularly commercial customers.

“Yesterday, Thursday 7th December, 2017, we maintained a customer desk service of 40 to attend to customers at the project office where the team of BOT system administrators are located. As usual, they worked the whole day to 12 midnight, dealing with the backlog of deposited faulty vending cards which need reactivation. Today, experts were able to re-engineer the system to reduce the human intervention and therefore we are operating a higher automated system that runs faster than the previous one, and we have increased the service desks from 40 to 60.

“We have also been able to set up customer service desks at the Kaneshie District Office, which is within the Avenor office of the Accra West Region, and also at the Achimota District where customers under these districts should contact for the reactivation of their cards. With respect to the two other districts, namely Dansoman and Korle-bu, we wish to appeal to customers to deposit faulty cards after it has been proven to be dysfunctional with their names and phone numbers. These will be reactivated.”

He also announced that next year, customers of ECG would be asked to pay their light bills via a mobile app to deal with the stress they usually go through when they need to recharge their credits.

“The BOT prepayment vending system failed on Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 7 am. By Monday, we were unable to vend to any customer within the Kaneshie, Korle-bu, Dansoman and Achimota districts. Customers started vending, then information triggered that customers who purchased credit after 14th November, 2017 were unable to vend at their various districts and vending points because their cards had been corrupted and needed to be reactivated.

“Unfortunately, instead of depositing their cards at their various districts for it be worked on, customers were rather directed from their various vending points to the Project Office where a team of experts are resolving the challenge, leading to the massing up of customers,” the MD narrated.