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The Electricity Company of Ghana will not find itself in the good books of the National Democratic Congress government after the former exposed the government’s attempt to blame it for the high electricity tariffs.

The government in recent times had blamed ECG for introducing a new billing system, which it claimed was responsible for the high increase in electricity bills, an assertion that was vehemently denied by the power provider.

In another turn of events, Michael Nyantakyi, Deputy General Secretary of Public Utilities Workers Union says Ghanaians should rather blame the NDC government for the high electricity tariffs and not the electricity company, explaining that the software is responsible for just 0.082% of the overbilling problems.

There seems to be an impending war between the Public Utility Regulatory Commission and ECG over the new software which has created a lot of dissatisfaction among the populace.

The Public Utility Regulatory Commission last two weeks ordered the suspension of the new billing software, arguing that it wanted to give consumers of power value for money.

But workers of ECG have given the PURC a seven-day ultimatum to retract the directive or face withdrawal of services.

PUWU explained that customers ought to direct their anger at the government and not them since the high increase was as a result of government’s taxes.

According to the Deputy General Secretary, they expected the PURC to specifically identify the problem with the software rather than over-generalization of the whole issue.

“We have waited more than a week but there has been no response from management,” Michael Nyantakyi lamented.
The ECG last week blamed the recent huge electricity tariffs on the taxes imposed by the Mahama government, as well as the withdrawal of subsidies forced by the International Monetary Fund.

The New Statesman had earlier reported that the Mahama government was lying to Ghanaians with the impression it sought to create that it was not aware of what had led to the unusual increases in the electricity tariffs currently being paid by Ghanaians.

But a meeting between officials of the EC and members of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament led to the power supplier being exonerated of the charges of faulty billing.

Member of Parliament for Effia Constituency in the Western Region, Joseph Cudjoe after the meeting exonerated ECG, stating that all the claims leveled against ECG have been found out to be false and not based on fact.

For what had occasioned the current humongous electricity tariffs, Mr Cudjoe stated: “I can say for a fact that it is not a software issue."

So far as ECG is concerned, he added, its performance target in connection with billing as an operational issue is the best.

He said ECG was expected to achieve a minimum target of 98 percent, but the company was doing 99.9 per cent accuracy which he described as "par excellence."

In a related development, the Institute of Energy and Climate Change Policy, is asking the government to publish the findings made by the task-force it formed to investigate electricity billing anomalies in the country.

According to the Institute, “a full publication of the reports unraveling the inconsistencies will help bring closure to the matter and rebuild investor and consumer confidence in the institutions involved.”

Government through the Ministry of Power set up a special Inter-Agency Taskforce to investigate complaints about bills from the Electricity Company of Ghana.

The task-force has since submitted its findings to the government, but the findings have not been made public.