Lost Reduction Project increases ECG revenue by 30% – MD

 The Managing Director of ECG, Mr Samuel Dubik Mahama, has urged the public not to politicise the mass replacement of obsolete metres in the country.

At the commencement of the mass replacement of 250,000 Nurri and other obsolete meters including postpaid in the Accra East Region of the company, Mr Mahama said the old metres had mechanical problems that incurred losses to the company.

However, he indicated that the company has had over 30 per cent increment in its revenue since the inception of the Lost Reduction Project (LRP) last year that led to some changes of metres in some districts.

“Let us not politicise this ex­ercise or say the exercise is being carried out because we want to cheat our customers.

We are also pleading with Poli­ticians not to call or say we should suspend the exercise,” he indicated.

The exercise, which began yesterday and expected to end in October, would replace a total of 370 metres daily across the districts in the Accra East Region.

“There’s been a huge revenue leakage and across the country we have to change close to 1.5 million metres across the country as quickly as possible to prevent more losses,” he noted.

To help improve energy manage­ment, Mr Mahama, stated that the new metres would allow customers to have access to detailed infor­mation about their energy con­sumption readings which would be

 enabling them to manage their usage more effectively.

He called on all customers to learn how to conserve energy by turning off electrical gadgets not in used in order to help them reserve energy.

 The ECG MD also appealed to the public not to tamper with the metres, as “they were smart and readable” in ECG offices, so that any attempt to tamper with the meters would alert the officials.

“Revenue generation by ECG is very critical to keep this sector alive that is why we embarked on this exercise some time back which has led to over 30 per cent incre­ment in our revenue already and reduced our losses in certain areas drastically.

It has provided us some massive visibility on the metres that have been installed that we know their real-time value,” Mr Mahama stated.

Furthermore, He called on all citizens to take up their respon­sibilities of paying their electric­ity bills and not use the election period as an excuse to escape their paying bills.

Furthermore, Mr Mahama indulged the citizenry to assist in the exercise to help complete it in time in order to provide the requisite benefits to both the company and customers.

On his part, the Regional General Manager, Mr Bismark Otoo, also stated that the replace­ment of the existing metres was necessitated by the numerous issues customers have encoun­tered with the aging infrastruc­ture which included inaccurate billing, frequent power outages, and challenges with recharging prepaid metres

“The new metres are designed to provide more accurate read­ings, thereby eliminating billing discrepancies that have affect­ed customers using the older models.

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will have the capability to monitor the metres remotely, enabling quicker detec­tion and resolution of issues”, he added.

 BY CECILIA LAGBA YADA