Why electricity consumers' credits are vanishing from their metres – PDS explains

The electricity service provider company, Power Distribution Services (PDS), has attributed the recent vanishing of electricity credit on consumers metres in parts of Accra to a system failure.

According to Mr William Boateng, in charge of Public Relations for the PDS, the areas affected are in Accra West Region including Kaneshie, Dansoman, Achimota and Korle Bu.

He said the failure in the system was a result of the recent adjustment in tariffs announced by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) and that the metres were not responding to the adjustments accurately in respect of time and date that was installed in the system and the server. 

He said after analysing the problem, the best way forward was to change the entire system.

Whilst some consumers have complained that when they top up credit, it does not reflect on their metres, others say their credits have been vanishing.

There are those who have run out of credit but are still able to use power without the system cutting them off and there are those whose systems are debiting them even though they are supposed to have credit on the metres.

For instance in a radio phone in programme on Accra based Citi FM on Thursday, a customer said he had Ghc3000 worth of electricity credit on his metre and went to op up Ghc1000 but by the term he swiped the card, the system said he was in a negative of Ghc4000.

Explaining the reasons for the challenges on Accra based Citi FM Thursday morning, Mr Boateng said it was as a result of challenges with their servers in relation to the recording of time and date and that some metres were not responding accurately.  

"My brother it will be refunded, I have spoken to the Director, we have the MasterCard and can easily identify those who have lost credit and it would be refunded, I can assure you."

He said a total of about 300,000 metres are affected and that, "there is no need going into the technicalities of why the metre is not responding accurately but it might have something to do with time and date installed in the metre".

"We have decided to take the bull by the horn and replace the entire metres ... we are talking about 300,000 within those four districts [Kaneshie, Dansoman, Achimota and Korle Bu].

"We can't replace them at a go, because of the numbers and so what they've decided in the region is that as and when customers come, then they have a challenge, and they come and buy, then they [engineers] go and replace the metre."

Mr Boateng urged customers to remain calm since the company was working hard to resolve the challenges with the vanishing prepaid credits and said all lost credits would be refunded.

"Let me apologise to our customers, we are on the ground, we are increasing the numbers of the technical men and we are bringing in third-party contractors to assist us to undertake this project.

But surprisingly some customers in Danfa and Madina have also complained of vanishing credit on their pre-paid metres.

Mr Boateng also said that though the company have their own challenges, they will work very hard to solve the problem insisting that the problem was not countrywide and there was therefore no need to create panic.

More to follow...