The Ministry of Power has said a substantial number of customers who were unduly billed following the recent hike in electricity tariffs have received a refund.
According to the Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor, about 333,902 customers on the pre-paid meter system have been refunded.
He said the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was still in the process of crediting back to its pre-payment meter customer base of about 531,014.
Some customers of the ECG have complained about the manner with which their credits run out even with most of the home appliances off.
But speaking on Citi FM Thursday morning, Mr Jinapor explained that the problem was caused by a defect in the configuration of the new tariffs.
He explained that the pre-paid system was configured to rise from the first of every month “but they informed me that the tariff adjustment took effect on the 15th and so it calibrated as if it was working from the 1st. And so I’ve asked them to work on the system so that we don’t have a recurrence of the situation.”
“…for instance when I bought 500 and I slot in my card I got back about 400 so my card immediately told me that I have a credit of about 900 Ghana Cedis instead of the 500 that I bought,” he said.
According to Mr Jinapor, there was a public announcement to the effect that the ECG was in the process of rectifying the anomalies and assured customers that the challenged would not reoccur.
The Deputy Minister also indicated that the Power Ministry was in the process of moving customers on the pre-paid meter system on to a common platform in order to ease their access to electricity credits when they run out.
“The uni-meter objective is to graduate to a common platform because as it stands, if I’m in Tema, I cannot go to East Legon and buy credit. We are congregating all these meters unto a common platform and we have identified a consultant to help us. So that, first of all, irrespective of where you are, you should be able to buy your credit from anywhere,” he noted.
By: Daily View Gh
