ECG Determine To Restore Hope In Management

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has intensified moves to cut down on illegal connections and theft to improve its revenue generation.

Currently, the ECG is estimated to lose over 30 percent of its revenue through systems and distribution losses.

Speaking to journalists after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Korean Electricity Company (KEPCO) and the ECG, the Managing Director of ECG, Robert Dwamena stated that the purpose of the partnership is aimed at reducing electric power losses to about 3 percent.

“Today we’ve signed this MoU between ECG and Korean Electricity Company, and they are rated as the number one utility company in the world and their transmission and distribution losses is about 3.6 percent,” he said.

Highlighting some areas targeted by the company to improve on, Mr. Dwamena stated that ECG staff will learn new applications targeted at making it difficult for illegal connection and power theft. According to him, the ECG is poised to reduce system and distribution loss to about 3 percent.

“We should be able to understand why they have been able to achieve a loss figure of 3.6 percent; we should be able to understand why they are the number one company in the world,” he said.

He explained that KEPCO will take ECG engineers through modern methodologies under the agreement, reforming its operations.

“Under this arrangement we are going to look at a number of areas, including the system loss, metering, geographic information system, distribution asset, management and capacity building so that at least we can use this opportunity to develop our staff,” he said.

He maintained that the agreement will be beneficial to Ghanaians as plans are underway to restructure the ECG.

“We have entered into this partnership to ensure that we can benefit from their expertise, their technology,” he noted.

On their part, the managers of KEPCO assured that they will introduce efficient methodologies to reform ECG to make it profitable.

However, in related news, the Western regional branch of the ECG has said the various Metropolitan, Municipal, District Assemblies and departments in the region owe them over three million Cedis in outstanding bills.

Speaking at a media briefing in Takoradi about the company's operations since the beginning of the year, the Western regional PRO of the ECG disclosed that a total of 371 people were involved in illegal connection amounting to GHC 316,385,00 but they managed to retrieve only GHC258,561,00.

Philip Osei Bonsu told Starr News’ Emmanuel Ohene Gyan, a revenue protection and collection exercise which was launched at the beginning of the year has helped with the fight against illegal connection.

"The revenue protection and collection exercise has been very successful, we have been able to retrieve GHC258,561,00 and what we are doing is to make sure we improve to unearth all the other illegal connections in the system to retain a lot of revenue in the company".