Ghana's major power distributor promises quick resolution of billing challenges

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has assured its numerous customers of resolving anomalies over errors relating to its billing system.

"The Electricity Company of Ghana has taken note of various complaints from our customers and stakeholders regarding our meters and billing... the outstanding anomalies, over-billing will be corrected by end of June, 2016." the company said in a statement issued here Monday.

Ghana's regulatory body, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) late last year approved an increase of 59.2 percent and 67.2 percent for electricity and water tariffs, respectively.

However, businesses and individuals have complained about the new tariffs, saying they are "astronomical and unreasonable".

Many Ghanaians also claim they have since May, this year, been over-billed by the company.

The statement indicated that the ECG introduced a new billing system, Commercial Management System, to improve the billing system with support from the World Bank under the Ghana Energy Development and Access Project.

"Since its inception in May 2015, a total of 8.5 million bills have been produced. Out of this total, some billing anomalies of 7, 823 representing 0.09 percent error have been identified. So far, 4,050 of anomaly bills representing 0.05 percent of the bills produced are yet to be resolved," the statement added.

The statement again noted that concerns surrounding the application of the software had been addressed, and that "there is no problem with the CMS software".

"The issues are the usual challenges that accompany initial application of every new system," it explained.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Energy and Climate Change Policy (IECP), has asked the government to publish the findings made by the task-force it formed to investigate electricity billing anomalies in the country.

"A full publication of the reports unraveling the inconsistencies will help bring closure to the matter and rebuild investor and consumer confidence in the institutions involved," it urged.

The Ghana government, through the Ministry of Power, set up a special Inter-Agency task force to investigate complaints about bills from the ECG.

The task-force has since submitted its findings to the government but these have not been made public.

IECP, in a statement, questioned the high tariffs and asked the government to explain to Ghanaians what caused the anomalies and whether it was the new taxes or the metering software used by the ECG. Endit