The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Tema Region, has collected 60 percent of the GH¢600 million owed by customers that the company targeted to collect during its one-month nationwide debt recovery exercise.

Dr. George Yaw Marfo, Director at the Managing Director’s office and the lead of the exercise in the Tema Region, disclosed this to the Ghana News Agency in Tema.

Dr. Marfo said with sustained momentum, all the monies would be recovered from defaulting customers.

He advised customers to prioritize the payment of bills to avoid disconnections, indicating that “Gone are the days we enjoyed a lot of free things.”

He disclosed that most of the factories owing the company had developed the habit of investing monies meant for payment of utility bills in other things until the utility company approached and pushed them to pay.

He said such a practice was not the best, “I think the industries should realize that electricity is one of the key inputs, without the power, you can’t produce anything, so the payment of their bills should serve as a priority.”

Dr. Marfo disclosed that even though some of the companies and customers were disconnected from the national grid, there was also a human face to it.

He said ECG entered debt scheduling for some clients who had genuine challenges in paying the bills, while others who expressed interest in paying were also given some days to clear the debt, and a follow-up was done afterward.

According to him, a few illegal connections, meter bypasses, and general power theft were discovered during the exercise, and he added that customers must desist from such practices and the ECG would embark on an exercise to identify and prosecute them.

He said it was about time that Parliament enacted laws that would make it unattractive for people to steal power and encourage them to pay their bills promptly, just as it existed in some neighbouring countries.

He also said ECG would, after the debt recovery exercise, organize some other programmes quarterly with the aim of both educating customers and disconnecting recalcitrant ones.

The ECG Director at the MD’s Office stated that the ECG had gotten a lot of feedback from the field during the exercise to help them serve customers better.

He however urged customers not to use the excuse of not receiving bills to stop paying for their utilities and encouraged those encountering any problem to pay the same amount as they previously received, and the company would reconcile whenever the bills were ready.