Correspondence from Upper East Region

Within the period of the beginning of this month, the Dangweo side of the VRA prepaid units selling point(D Line) in Bolga witnessed a crowd in long queues waiting to buy some units.

The cause of the traffic was attributed to most people waiting to buy the credit at the beginning of the month.

It was also the increment in tariffs and customers being anxious to know the new rates.

They indicated that it has always been the case, within the first few days of the month.

They explained that buying the units more than once a month makes the tariffs high because buying the second time in a month comes at a higher cost.

GhanaWeb visited the place, and some of the customers expressed their frustrations regarding the situation.

Mr. Tia Adam Noah, who had been in the queue for over an hour lamented that that had always been their fate at the beginning of every month.

"I have been here for like one hour, 30 minutes. At the beginning of every month, we have to stand in a long queue. Sometimes we have to go home and come back again."

He complained that the situation was very uncomfortable, and called on the officials of the Electricity Company of Ghana, to handle the situation.

Mr. Felix Anafo attributed the delay to people trooping in to inquire about the new rates.

According to him, many had heard of the tariff increment and came by to find out the difference.

"I came here to buy the lights around 6pm. Up till now, I'm still here. What caused the delay was people will come and ask how much they will pay for the units," he noted.

"I am done but the queue is too long. I think people will be here till 10pm."

He stated that he used to pay between 192 cedis for 150 units of credit, but now had to pay 227 cedis.

He observed that from the look of things, the people would still be in the queue until 11:00pm.

Mr. Tia noted that it was not the first time they were experiencing such a problem.

He pointed out that they had been experiencing that almost every first month of the year. He added that they had laid complaints regarding that but to no avail.

He added that looking at the time, they would have been engaged in productive activities, instead of getting stuck in long queues.

"At this time of the night, we would have been doing other things, but we are still here. They hate saying that the network is making us delay like this," he complained.

He opined that the era where they operated the postpaid system was far better. He appealed for that system to be brought back.

"The postpaid was better because, with that one, you use the credit and then VRA will come with the light bill and then we will pay, but this one, we pay to them maybe they might take the light," he explained.

"Or if there is a problem, sometimes they don't come to fix it because we have already bought the credit," he further explained.

He also stated that with the new meters, they sometimes buy the credit and when they get home, the credit is not on the card.

He complained that such situations were draining because they always have to bear the cost of the transportation there to lay their complaints.