Ghana�s Prepaid Meter Units Run Faster Than Usain Bolt

In a bid to ensure efficiency in the usage of electricity supply and also reduce the cumbersome nature of the work that personnel of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) go through, Ghana introduced prepaid meters to replace postpaid meters in the year 2005. Following the introduction of this new system, the ECG enumerated quite a number of advantages associated with the use of the prepaid meters over the past years. But a former National Youth Organizer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Anthony Karbo believes measures should be taken by both the ECG and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) on regulating how the prepaid meters operate. The PURC was set up by an Act of Parliament, ACT 538 in 1997 and given presidential assent on 16th October, 2007. It was established to regulate and oversee the provision of utility services by public utilities to consumers and to provide for related matters. The PURC last week began justifying a proposed utility tariff increment as realistic, despite consumers� concerns that a 150% adjustment will be hard to bear. The PURC insists the adjustment is long overdue; the last time any increment was announced was in 2010 and since then, the cost of doing business has shot up. This means companies need to balance their books in order to attract investments, Nana Yaa Jantuah, Public Affairs officer of PURC defended. But many have expressed disappointment at the work and functions of the commission since its establishment. Anthony Karbo insist government officials rather benefit from hard working Ghanaians who toiled to pay their electricity bills despite how costly it is to use a prepaid meter. He alleges that, almost all government workers own the ECG huge sums of monies for non-payment of electricity bills but nothing has been done to retrieve those amounts. Speaking on Adom FM, Anthony Karbo threatened a mass demonstration if the tariff is increased above 100% saying �many of the ministers and government officials today don�t pay electricity. They over use the electricity, yet still don�t pay. ��so those selling ice water and ice cream are the ones going to suffer to pay this amount. And these new prepaid meters also run faster than Usain Bolt. As soon as you recharge, in just two weeks� time you have to recharge again. We have a serious problem because the units on these meters run faster than Usain Bolt,� he asserted.