Tamale Metropolitan Assembly has connected over 159 communities onto the national electricity grid out of 197 communities to enhance the growth of small scale businesses and generate employment.
The remaining communities would be connected by 2012, Alhaji Abudulai Haruna Friday, Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive, said at a Town Hall Meeting organised by the Assembly in Tamale on Thursday.
He said a technical team had already been sent by the Ministry of Energy to the Assembly to work out the modalities.
Alhaji Friday said the Volta River Authority (VRA) had mounted 27 transformers in the Metropolis and mentioned some of the beneficiary communities as Changli, Choggu West, Dungu, and University for Development Studies (UDS).
He said some of the challenges facing VRA were non-payment of electricity bills, illegal line connections and the high rate at which Tamale was growing making it difficult for VRA to cope.