Regional News of Thursday, 30 January 2020

Source: Micheal Akrofi, contributor

ECG embarks on customer education in the eastern region

ECG staff speaking at a town hall meeting ECG staff speaking at a town hall meeting

The Eastern Regional branch of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has embarked on customer education campaign to sensitise its customers and stakeholders on the company’s operations.

The campaign which targets Opinion leaders, students and customers in the Eastern Region took the forms of Town hall Meetings, Community Durbars and Public education on selected radio stations in the region.

According to the Public Relations Officer, Ms. Mary Eshun-Oppong, ECG was committed to building mutually beneficial relationships with its various stakeholders through such engagements, as a positive step to making information available to the public.

She stated that as a customer-oriented company, it is important for ECG to get closer to its customers to know their concerns and challenges with regards to the company’s services and operations. She added that such initiatives help ECG to improve service delivery to achieve customer satisfaction as feedback generated from the campaigns are worked on to enhance our services. “This is a key part of EGC’s strategy to improve customer service delivery” she added. According to Ms. Eshun-Oppong about twenty communities in the Eastern region have been visited so far since the beginning of the year 2020. She added that “this is something we do every year, last year we were able to engage about 140 communities across all the 14 operational districts and this year we have done 20 so far”.

Communities visited include; Ata ne Ata, Atarekane, Miaso, Owurobong, Odumase, Kotoso, Nkwantanan, Ahinkwa Camp, Dadetsunya, Akwadum Dorsey, Asigya No. 1 & No. 2. Chiefs, Elders, Opinion leaders and other customers in the communities visited met the ECG officials with enthusiasm to listen to their message.

The education team led by the Marketing Officer (MO) for the region, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, educated customers on energy conservation, billing cycle, metering, New service connection, illegal connection, safety tips among other issues.

According to the Mr. Lincoln, illegal connection activities affects the operations of ECG and that it contributes immensely to the commercial losses in the company. “Most of the low voltages that occur in some parts of the region is due to overloading of transformers which is largely caused by illegal connections” he added.

Mr. Lincoln therefore cautioned customers to desist from any form of illegal connection activity and encourage customers to report suspected illegal connection to the nearest ECG office for a reward.

Educational materials such as service connection charges chart, electricity consumption charts, illegal connection leaflets, call centre and others ECG brochures were also distributed to the customers. Customers were also given free energy saving bulbs.

Concerns as raised by customers during the community durbars and townhall meetings bordered on new service connection procedures, separate meter acquisition, pole extension, billing issues, and unannounced outages.

Customers who participated in the campaign expressed appreciation to ECG and appealed to the education team to organise such programmes frequently for their customers.