The Accra West Region of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) recovered six gigawatt hours (GWh) of stolen power, amounting to GH¢3.2 million last year.
The amount is GH¢700,000 higher than the GH¢2.5 million recoveries it made in 2020 of four GWh.
“What it means is that we identified culprits and estimated the amount of power they might have used, billed and charged them accordingly. These are punitive charges, comprising the cost of energy used and administrative charges,” the Accra West Regional Manager of the ECG, Ebenezer Ghunney, told the Daily Graphic.
The region, with a customer base of about 600,000 covers the Ablekuma, Bortianor, Achimota, Dansoman, Korle Bu, Nsawam, Kaneshie and Amasaman districts of ECG.
Mr Ghunney said in 2021, a team from the region undertook 13,000 targeted visits, out of which the majority; about 90 per cent were found to have engaged in illegalities.
The illegalities included meter bypasses, meter tampering and reconnection without recourse to the ECG.
“If you don’t undertake targeted visits, the probability of you getting persons engaged in illegalities is low,” he explained.
The Accra West Regional Manager indicated that the company adopted a number of procedures to uncover illegality, which was responsible for revenue losses.
One of the procedures, Mr Ghunney said, was the “non-purchase” strategy for prepaid customers “where we go into our system to check persons who have not bought power for some time now.
“Once such persons have been identified, we go and visit to find out why they are not coming to buy credit,” he explained.
In some cases, the regional manager said, the customers genuinely might have travelled, saying in most cases, “those non-purchases turn out to be persons who have engaged in illegalities”.
