Operation Keep The Lights On: ECG targets GH¢200 million in exercise

The Electricity Company of Ghana will from today embark on a massive revenue mobilisation exercise to retrieve money owed by customers in its operational areas.

The exercise dubbed “Operation Keep The Lights On”, would focus on all categories of customers indebted to the company.

The Director of Communications of the ECG, William Boateng, who confirmed this to the Daily Graphic, said the target for the two-week exercise was to raise GH¢200 million.

After the two weeks, he said the company would access the exercise and see what it had done so far and then plan ahead again.

The ECG has since March 2023 been embarking on debt retrieval exercises in a bid to get customers to pay up for the power they have consumed.

“When we go round, we would also pay attention to the prepaid customers to reduce our commercial losses by checking the integrity of their meters,” he said. 

Target

Mr Boateng said the target of the exercise was the postpaid customers who were in the numbers of 2,127,936, made up of special load tariff (SLT) and non-SLT customers.

He said the company did not have much problem with the SLT customers which were the industries and manufacturing companies since it had a direct relationship with them thereby making it easy to collect their bills with them and that the focus was on the non-SLT customers, made up of small entities and domestic customers.

The ECG Director of Communication said the objective of the company was to up its game and then add an additional GH¢ 200 million to its revenue every month, adding that “Our target is around GH¢ 1.2 billion and we want to shoot up to GH¢ 1.4 billion”.

He explained that as and when the company was able to replace the meters, it would be adding on based on its analyses and what it had done on the ground.

Mandate

Mr Boateng said the mandate of the company, among other things, was to bill customers and collect the revenue and that while some persons had consumed power, they were not paying and so those were the ones the company would be going after, effective today, January 15, 2025.

He pleaded with members of the public not to tamper with the company’s meters and that with electricity being the driver of the economy, they should pay whenever they consumed power.

“Please be a good citizen and be patriotic, if you have a challenge with ECG, you can negotiate with the company and you don’t need to tamper with the meter,” he said.

He explained that aside from increasing its revenue, the company had to ensure that it paid its suppliers and distribution companies such as the independent power producers.

“As we speak now, we are confronted with the issue of keeping the lights on. In the wake of that, we as a company are meant to assist with financial assistance when it comes to the purchase of fuel,” he said.

Illegal

Ahead of the Operation Keep the Lights On, the power distributor has reminded customers that self-reconnection after disconnection is a criminal offence and will attract legal consequences.

The Director of Communications said regional and district offices would operate with reduced staff during the exercise to allow full participation by senior management and staff while continuing to provide essential services to customers.

"ECG wishes to state that the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission's LI (2413) gives us full access to all our installations, therefore, customers and the general public are being advised to cooperate with ECG to carry out our mandate," Mr Boateng emphasised.