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The Energy Commission, on Tuesday launched a pilot toll free short code service at Teshie in the Greater Accra Region for monitoring the reliability of service delivery by the electricity distribution utilities. The service code would empower electricity consumers in Teshie to check the frequency and duration of power outages from the distribution of utilities. Dr Nii Darko Asante, Technical Director at the Energy Commission said at the launch that the purpose of the project is to allow all registered electricity consumers to send reports directly to it anytime power goes off. The Commission is mandated to regulate the Electricity Company of Ghana, which is required to provide periodic reports on its performance. However, Dr Asante said a lot of things are happening in Teshie since prepaid metres were sent there, hence the need to let the residents be part of the reporting system. In this way, he said the commission would be in a better position to monitor effectively the efficiency or otherwise of the electricity distribution utilities. Registration on the system begins with the customer sending GEO code once to short-code 4455. Before texting, one had to type the name space and the GEO code and text OFF when electricity supply is off and ON when it is on. According to the commission all information can be sent to Vodafone, Tigo and Airtel. Residents took turns to raise questions bordering on irregular power supply, reliability of the service and relatively high cost of prepaid metres.