The Deputy Minister for Power, John Jinapor has revealed that government has so far spent about 99 million dollars on the importation of pre-paid meters.
The said amount, according to the Deputy Minister was spent on procuring about 100,000 meters between 2012 and 2015 to aid ECG and NEDCO with easy collection of revenue for the country’s power distribution as well as help customers to manage the use of electricity.
[contextly_sidebar id=”MwaBUcCGynpMKbuEuy6SNr73P0Ny7kmj”]John Jinapor made the revelation while responding to a question posed by the MP for Ablekuma North, Justice Joe Appiah in parliament on Tuesday.
“…The introduction of prepaid energy meters was a means of enabling the utilities, mainly ECG and NEDCO to collect revenues in order to finance their operations and improve on their efforts to provide quality service to customers. This was also intended to help customers to manage the use of electricity to avoid waste and also prevent the accumulation of unpaid bills.
“Following government’s approval, a leisure project was scheduled to replace all credit meters with prepaid meters for all ministries, municipal and district assemblies in their operational areas. The quantity of meters procured from the year 2012 to 2015 was 235,000 pieces at the cost of 14,553,738 for the NEDCO operation areas and 764,135 pieces at the cost of 84, 723,351 million for the ECG operational areas from 2012 to 2015,” the Minister said.
This revelation follows complaints from some consumers about anomalies in electricity bills.
The problem has largely been attributed to ECG’s faulty meters but President Mahama has given the assurance that government will take effective measures to rectify the problem.
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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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