A primary sub-station is to be constructed at Tsopoli, while the Baatsona enclave would have a new Bulk Supply Point (BSP) by the end of the year. Mr Mark Asomani-Wiafe, Tema Regional ECG Engineer, announced this on Tuesday during a media interaction.

Mr Asomani-Wiafe said the construction of the new station would be done under the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) programme. He added that civil works were current ongoing for the mounting of an additional transformer on the harbour road near the Papaye restaurant which would take some of the load off the transformer located in the Meridian area.

A 30 by 35 Mega Volts Amp (MVA) sub-station is also to be constructed to supply power for the Tema Port Expansion project.  Mr Ali Toporira, Tema Regional Commercial Manager, said customers in five of the region’s districts were currently on prepaid metres while a 90 per cent coverage had been achieved in two or three other districts.

Mr Toporira added however that customers in and around Krobo and Somanya were still using postpaid metres adding that a new billing system was introduced in those areas in October 2016 to enable residents pay their bills at any part of the country.

Explaining the pre-paid billing system, he noted that at the beginning of every month, service charges for street light and other levies were deducted from the first units purchased by a client.

He added that apart from the deductions, the appropriate subsidies were also added before the remaining unit was credited to the buyer.  He reminded customers that their consumption determined how long units purchased would last, indicating that tariff graduated therefore it was not automatic that clients would use the same amount of power consistently.

Mr Toporari further stated that customers must be conscious of the power they consumed and observe basic power saving tips to ensure that their units lasted longer. Mr Jones Ofori-Addo, Tema Regional General Manager, stated that there was the need to engage the media more as they received most of the complaints against the ECG from the public.

Mr Ofori-Addo indicated that such interactions would inform the media about his outfit’s operations as well as take feedback from the public through the media. He announced that with the help of six contractors with the support of staff of the Loss Control Unit, the Tema Regional ECG was able to recover about 85 per cent of revenue lost through its ‘sweeping’ of illegal connection project.

Four million cedis out of the over 5.9 million cedis power theft in the Region was successfully collected by the end of December 2016.