The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), is urging the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), to shoot down any increment in electricity tariff that will be requested by the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG.
ACEP explains that the waste within the state power company is the justification for their demand.
This comes on the back of an Audit Report by the Auditor-General revealing that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), between 2014 and 2016, procured prepaid meters and conductors worth GHS 59million, but the equipment has been left to rot.
The report also noted that ECG incurred expenses of over a GHS 180 million as a capacity charge by Cenit Energy in 2018.
The Policy Lead, Petroleum & Conventional Energy at ACEP, Justice Kodzo Yaotse in a Citi News interview on the latest audit report said “after these revelations, any call for adjustments in tariffs have to come with very sound justifications. The customer cannot be made to pay for the inefficiencies of the ECG, that will not be fair.”
“PURC has to be very firm on them to ensure that such losses are not countenanced.”
Prepaid meters, conductors worth GHS59M abandoned by ECG for 5-years – Audit report
The 2020 report of the Auditor-General unravelled how prepaid meters and conductors procured by the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG, have been left unused for five years.
The abandoned meters and conductors are said to be worth GHS59,161,964.56.
Procured between 2014 and 2016, the meters have not been issued out to customers because ECG management failed to distribute old stock before purchasing new meters, the audit report mentioned.
The Auditor-General has thus recommended that prepayment meters and conductors are given out without delay.
Failure to do that, the report stated, “the amount involved should be recovered from the officers who engaged in the procurement”.
