Staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) are unhappy with Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s assertion that some IT staff in the company initially sabotaged efforts to digitalize the company.

According to the Vice President, after carefully studying ECG’s revenue for some time, he realized that the annual amount accrued was stagnant.

Speaking at the Annual AGM of Anti-corruption Agencies in Africa, Dr Bawumia said he therefore instructed that revenue collection be digitalized.

However, some IT staff inserted ransomware in a bid to stop the process. He said as a result of National Security efforts, the culprits were arrested which allowed for the digitalization of ECG.

“The Electricity Company of Ghana, the monthly revenue was GH¢450 every month. And then I looked at the data, because over time we kept increasing electricity prices and all of that, but for some reason for about four to five years when you look at the data it was GH¢450 million every month. It didn’t change and I said how come? This is remarkable so I said we need to send in a team to digitalize revenue collection of the Electricity Company of Ghana, so we sent in a team, and we began the process of digitalization,” he said.

“Can you believe that workers within the system sabotaged, they put in ransomware into the whole system? And the system essentially collapsed. We had to send in national security who eventually found that it was some of the staff at the IT department who were culpable. And we found the computer which the ransomware was injected in the system. It took us a while to restore the system. They asked for a ransom to actually allow for this to work. Can you imagine? That we should pay, they submitted a bill that we should pay for the system to work."

“Anyway, they were arrested. And we restored the system and we digitalized the system and we said that no more cash payments for electricity in Ghana. You only pay by your mobile money, electronic bank transfers. So that is now the case. Can you believe that from GH¢450 million a month, collections have now gone to over a billion cedis a month?”

But the workers of ECG have not taken kindly to what the Vice President said.

In a memo intercepted by Starr News, they expressed their unhappiness with the claims by Dr Bawumia.

“Hello Brothers and Sisters, leadership has cited a delivery by the Vice President recounting an event of the past in which the ICT system of ECG was collapsed by the introduction of a malware. The Vice President categorically accused the staff of ECG as being the perpetrators behind such unfortunate incidents," part of the memo read.

“Leadership has taken note and are currently in a discussion to respond in a statement accordingly. We urge staff to remain calm and not to be down by such publication but continue to work as expected,” it added.