The vendors at the Kejetia Market Complex have declared that they will employ every legal strategy at their disposal to get each store its own meter.
The traders have been complaining about the one bulk meter that is currently used for about 7,000 stores within the market for the past two years.
No progress has been made in persuading the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the management of Kejetia Market to give each store its own meter.
Due to this, the traders have stopped paying their electricity bills since May 2021, resulting in a debt of five million four hundred thousand cedis overall (GHS 5,400,000). Since six days ago, electricity has been cut off from the market due to unpaid bills.
Speaking on 3FM’s Sunrise show, Akwasi Prempeh, the president of the Federation of Kumasi Traders, stated that although they are prepared to pay the debt they owe ECG and have agreed to pay 20% of it today, they insist that individual separate meters should be assigned to the stores.
“We’ll take a different tack to fight for that if we don’t get individual separate meters within the market. The more people you have on a bulk meter, the more power we use and the higher rate the ECG also bills us, ECG has informed us,” he emphasized.
Since the current system, which allows the market management to use their discretion to share the bill among the traders, is problematic, the traders are pleading with the government to help resolve the issue and also assure that they are prepared to bear the cost of installing the meters.
Prempeh continued, “It doesn’t give the traders the chance to regulate or even monitor their electricity consumption.”
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Joseph Asare
