We’ll empower our prosecutor to start biting meter-tampering customers – ECG

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is considering legal means as part of its effort to fight meter tampering by customers.

The company has observed that illegal connections has caused the company huge revenues losses.

Speaking about this in an interview on Accra-based JoyNews’ PM Express, the ECG Managing Director, Samuel Dubik Mahama, said they will begin to strike against such defaulting customers.

According to him, his outfit will begin to prosecute customers to serve as a deterrent to others.

"ECG has a prosecutor, and there are a few of them that he has prosecuted. We have gotten to the point where we have to empower him to bite because we are being taken for granted," he said.

He explained that "In Ivory Coast, an illegal connection is a crime, but it is not so in Ghana. They call it a power bypass. We decided to forgive and start afresh. This exercise will be used to build dockets for prosecution."

According to Mr. Dubik, such illegalities are making the company incur some technical losses.

In a disturbing revelation, the ECG MD noted that two out of five customers are either not paying bills or are paying less than the tariffs due to the illegal connection of faulty meters.

"Faulty meters and people bypassing the meter are technical losses.

"For every five post-paid customers, two of them are not paying the right tariffs because they have bypassed the meter or they have tampered with it," noted Dubik Mahama.

Meanwhile, the ECG has recently begun a "revenue war" by disconnecting customers who are owing it huge sums of money.