Tema-Ghana, April 20, GNA – Wealth in Limited, a Chinese establishment at Tema Community 12, has turned their residential apartments into a supermarket, thereby using residential ECG meter for commercial purposes.
Mr. Emmanuel Ankomah, the General Manager of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Tema Regional Office, who detected the fraudulent act during routine inspection stressed that “as a result of illegal convention the company had issues with the tariff class, they have been put on using their residential place for business purposes”.
Mr. Ankomah said now we need to study the pattern of the bill and make sure we do retrospective billing so that all the components and elements that we had to miscalculate will be recalculated for them to pay, “we will negotiate with them, and then the payment will be made.”
The Manager advised customers to inform the company in writing when they convert their residential premises to commercial ones to enable the company to convert their tariffs per meters from a residential one to a non-residential one.
On the ongoing nationwide revenue mobilization exercise by the company, he said it had been good as some customers were voluntarily paying their debts, while those who were disconnected for failure to honour their bills had not reconnected themselves.
The Manager, however, said a few challenges had been encountered during the exercise, adding that there had been some issues with customers not allowing ECG staff to enter their premises to check their meter.
He said in the ECG Nungua District, a few such cases were recorded, adding that the company had taken measures to address it.
He reminded customers to check the identity cards of the staff and allow them to do their work, as several public announcements had been made ahead of the exercise, and therefore, preventing staff from doing their work was unacceptable.
“We have identification, so we want to encourage them; if you have any doubt, please ask for the person’s ID, and if you disallow us to have access to our meters it is not the best.
“We expect that our customers will cooperate with us; we are in just to dialogue and negotiate to collect our money; let’s have our money and we have no problems with you, if you resist us from entering your premises, then we need to take it from a different angle,” he stated.
