ECG Denies Sabotaging Government

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has denied claims by some members of government that it is sabotaging President John Mahama by over charging customers in electricity bills.
The majority chief whip, Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, said on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday that, by more than doubling the cost of electricity consumption, the ECG was imposing undue hardship on Ghanaians and undermining the effort of the president to end the power crisis.
However, the public relations officer of the Accra West branch of ECG, Eric Asante, denied that the company was undermining the president in anyway.
He told Accra-based Class FM that it was impossible for all workers of ECG to collude to sabotage the president, adding that some of the workers had worked for many years under different governments.
Mr Asante said the current challenge had been brought about by the company’s new billing software.
“Overbilling has been with us all these years that the ECG has been in existence, but I think it is the degree of error we are experiencing, which the regulator has pointed out,” he said.
He gave an assurance that the ECG would work as professionals to solve the challenge.
“… we are professionals, and we will make sure that our core values will be adhered and cannot allow any staff to sabotage anyone at the expense of this software [new billing system]. We will make sure that we solve the problem, it is a system that is not totally bad as it is being professed to be,” he added.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has already ordered the ECG to suspend the implementation of its new billing software until further notice.
The commission said in a statement issued in Accra on Tuesday that after investigations into complaints by customers that they were paying more than the stipulated tariff for electricity, an anomaly in the initial implementation of the new billing software by the ECG had been discovered.