Academic activities at Accra Academy Senior High School are expected to resume as the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) restores power supply to the academic institution.
ECG on Monday, February 19, disconnected the school from the national grid due to an unpaid debt of over GH¢400,000. This resulted in a total blackout on the entire campus.
Paul Agraga, the head of prosecution at ECG, explained in an interview on Citi FM that “the disconnection is part of an ongoing initiative to recover outstanding payments owed to the company.”
“Normally, we have a team that goes around once a while to inform our customers of their debts so they do not accumulate and so if you take Accra Academy for example, they owe in excess of GH¢400,000 to the ECG.”
Mr Agraga emphasised the importance of ECG recovering the monies owed to pay off the power producers.
He dismissed the assertion that the company is targeting some selected senior schools.
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“We did not specifically target Accra Academy, it is an ongoing operation we are conducting, and a number of homes, businesses, and institutions have also suffered the same fate.
“The no-free consumption does not discriminate at all and once you owe, you will be disconnected. It does not matter whether it is Parliament or a security service because we also owe people that we have to pay,” said Mr Agraga.
Meanwhile, ECG’s External Communications Manager, Laila Abubakari, explained in a separate interview that one condition for the school to be reconnected to the national grid is for the authorities to “settle at least 50% of the outstanding bills.”
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The exercise also affected some pre-paid metre staff on the school premises. But the communications manager described it as an “unfortunate development,” indicating her outfit will look into that to address any anomalies.
However, a teacher who spoke on anonymity clarified that the school is not directly responsible for settling the debt, and they are unaware of the specific amount owed to the power distribution company.
In a related development, the Ghana Education Service has released some GH¢5 million to ECG to pay the bills owed by some public educational institutions.