Prepaid Customers in Koforidua the Eastern Regional Capital are agitating over the inability to recharge exhausted prepaid credit for about four days now.
Some of the affected customers are sleeping in darkness, food preserved in refrigerators going bad, and offices and institutions without generators whose prepaid power credit has exhausted yet unable to recharge are all being affected.
“Not encouraging at all. This situation motivates people to go into illegal connections oo. Kids had to go to school in a wet and not ironed school uniform,” a customer Sawodji said.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has acknowledged it is currently experiencing some technical challenges in relation to the prepaid metering system nationwide, which has resulted in some customers being unable to recharge prepaid electric power credit on prepaid metres for the past four days or so now.
The technical challenge has affected customers in 10 operational regional areas of the ECG in Volta, Kumasi, Accra, Takoradi, Tema, Cape Coast, Kasoa, Winneba, Swedru, Koforidua, Nkawkaw, and Tafo.
Meanwhile, other customers are complaining about illegal deductions since tariffs on electricity were increased.
The problem might have occurred during the calibration of the software to reflect the new tariffs.
However, ECG says its Engineers are still working to resolve it.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) announced a 27.15% increase in tariff for electricity and a 21.55% increase in water tariff effective September 1, 2022.
This was after utility companies including the Electricity Company of Ghana and Ghana Water Company Limited proposed an increase in tariffs by 148% and 334% respectively.
PURC however explains that the decision was arrived at after rigorous analysis and extensive consultations with industry players, as well as an assessment of the economic conditions of consumers.
Addressing journalists in Accra on Monday, August 15, 2022, the Chairman of the PURC, Mr Ebo Quagraine called on the public to support the utility companies to recoup revenues by reporting illegal connections.
The ECG had proposed that its tariffs be increased by 148% for 2022 and with 7.6% average adjustments between the periods of 2023 to 2026.
The proposed sharp increase, according to the ECG was due to the gap between the actual cost recovery tariff and PURC-approved tariffs as well as the cost of completed projects.
The GWCL also argued that while the average tariff per cubic metre in 2019 was 1.27 USD, the same was reduced to USD 1.13 as a result of cedi depreciation.
The GWCL said this had affected its ability to carry out repairs and replacements of aged and obsolete equipment and pipelines
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Obed Ansah
