The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is receiving a lot of plaudits from business owners and residents of Bogoso and Tarkwa in the Western Region for its ‘Operation Fix the Bill’ and ‘Pay the Bill’ campaign.
They praise ECG for instituting the campaign which, according to them, will end the age-long challenges they had with whether they are paying the right amount with respect to their electricity consumption.
‘Operation Fix the Bill’ and ‘Pay the Bill’ aim at capturing the consumption readings of postpaid customers while enabling ECG produce actual bills.
A team of officials from the Western Region Office of ECG led by the Regional Manager, Ing. Emmanuel Justice Ofori, took the exercise to Bogoso and Tarkwa.
About 50 customers including businesses and residences had their postpaid meters checked.
Gabriel Ashum, a resident of Nyamekrom-Bogoso, said the measure taken by ECG, “is the best considering the fact that sometimes we wonder whether we are really paying for what we have actually consumed or it just someone somewhere in-puting whatever he or she likes”.
“If you go around you will see that some of the postpaid meters have their faces blurred and so it is difficult to read the figures. I wonder how reading of such meters can be effectively done by a human. But with this machine I believe it can capture the right data. So I will applaud ECG for not thinking about the money they get but also about whether they are not shortchanging us. This is a commendable customer relations measure.”
Ewurabena Gyasi, who operates a cold store, said: “I’ve been doing this business for a while now. I have followed my consumption trend and I’m able to predict how much I will spend on electricity bill at the end of the month. But sometimes there is a huge disparity and I began to wonder. But with this machine I can join the meter reader to read my meter so I can see the exact amount on the machine. With this, I’m not sure anyone will doubt the bill. This is very innovative and forward-thinking.”
“I think this will also help us build trust with ECG that indeed we are paying for the right amount. This has to be sustained. It should be more than the one month that I’ve heard,” a resident of Tarkwa Cyanide said.
Western Region Manager Emmanuel Justice Ofori added that the exercise is also to ensure that “we verify the integrity of meter readings, build confidence in the bills we deliver to our customers, and also collect arrears owed by them”.
“What we also did was that when we are reading the meter with the machine we will show the customer how it is done and show the final readings. Essentially, we want to build trust. We want them to be assured that what they pay is exactly what was captured on their meters.
“We have also used the exercise to capture valuable feedback from our customers both residents and business owners on other ways to improve our services to serve them even better.”
By Eric Yaw Adjei