ECG begins night swoops to clamp down illegal connections

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has announced plans to commence night swoops to clamp down on illegal users of power in Ghana.

The exercise is targeted at industries, entertainment centres, hotels and households who use electricity power illegally thereby, causing financial loss to the state.

According to the power company, the initiative is to cut down the increased cases of power thefts recorded annually.

“The Electricity Company is suffering a lot from power theft. When we purchase from our power suppliers, we lose about 24.6%. Out of the 24.6%, 10% is due to technical losses and a whopping 14.6% goes for commercial loses and 1% of these losses translate to approximately $17million,” it revealed.

Speaking on News Desk on Joy News, General Manager of the Revenue Protection Unit at ECG, Michael Twum Barimah stated the move was also to improve revenue collection.

“This exercise has been going on for some time now to curb illegal connections and improve revenue collection but it has not actually resulted in adequately improving our resources but we want to deepen revenue collections because we buy power,” he said.

Mr Twum Barimah added two task forces will be put in place to ensure the effectiveness of the exercise.

”The first task force has to do with the unplanned outages within the company and the second is the commercial loss reduction tax force,” he added.