Use mobile app to purchase electricity to curb COVID-19 spread - ECG

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has advised its customers to use its mobile app to buy and pay for their electricity bills.

The directive, according to the ECG is in compliance with President Akufo-Addo’s measures to help curtail the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country.

Ghana has so far recorded 68 positive cases of the COVID 19.

In an interview on an Accra based radio station Joy News, monitored by the Graphic Online, ECG’s strategic business unit manager for the Ashanti Region, Mr David Asamoah said measures have been put in place to prevent customers from coming to the office to purchase electricity.

"So what we have done is that we launched an application, it was the Vice President who did the launch last month (February 18, 2020), since then, we've tried to educate our customers that you don't necessarily need to come to the office to do a transaction," Mr Asamoah said.

"The first thing we've done is that if you are using credit meter, you only need your account number and then once you download the ECG mobile app, you can download on Google play store," he added.

Mr Asamoah added that the ECG only faces issues with load management during nighttime.

"I want to say that if you talk about our transformers by our policies that we are implementing now, every transformer is supposed to be loaded to 70 per cent.... when the people stay home and they even switch on the suppress load,.....our load has always been big at night, now that they are home using the power in the day we don't have a problem at all, normally at night, that is when we get challenges...," he explained.

Background

The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia last month launched a mobile application designed for the purchase of electricity credit and the payment of bills.

Known as ‘ECG Power’, the app was designed by in-house ICT staff of ECG. It will make it possible for 2.8 million out of the company’s 3.8 million customers to make payments for power purchased and services rendered by the Company. This figure is expected to rise by the end of the year when old meters are replaced with smart ones.