The External Communications Officer of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), has bemoaned what she says is the high rate of power theft in the country.
Speaking in an interview on Joy FM, Leila Abubakar described the power theft situation as “abysmal, jaw-dropping, and blatant.”
According to her, the scale of power theft identified so far in the company’s ongoing debt recovery exercise is huge.
“ECG has its own shortcomings here and there which we are trying to solve. Most of it are engineering problems but it looks like a large number of people intentionally steal power and it is not any reason that can’t be solved by ECG. It is just because they do not want to buy power,” she stated.
Her comments come after several illegalities were discovered by the ECG team on their revenue mobilisation drive to recover GH₵5.7 billion debt.
In the meantime, managers of the popular hotel, Hillburi, located at Aburi in the Eastern Region have been arrested for allegedly stealing electricity.
They are expected to be arraigned before court on April 1.
The company is said to have enjoyed electricity illegally until engineers of the ECG spotted the unauthorised connection during a search on the premises this week.
ECG discovered that Hilburri Hotel had dug the ground and connected wires to the grid, diverting the load from passing through any meters.
Also, three other individuals arrested for power theft in separate incidents are currently in detention at the Legon Police Station and are expected to be processed to appear before a judge later.
According to Madam Abubakar, the results of their investigation indicated that the hotel had a motive and was on a quest to steal power.
“The one that affects me the most is just how much power is being stolen. We’ve been lenient for too long, I think that it’s time that we look at these issues separate from all the other things that we go through, and start prosecuting people seriously.
“Hillburi is just one of the many hotels that we have found out to have bypassed us, and theirs was more shocking because of the intentionality behind it. Because for someone to be able to dig the ground, wire through and connect directly to source, it means that they were really looking at stealing power.
“When the engineers put the equipment around our meters, they realised there was no current flowing through. It means they had just bypassed and have created their own service line that they were just feeding through,” she said.
She stated that prosecution for power theft is something Ghanaians should expect to see more of, adding that if ECG can prove that you intentionally stole power, you must face the consequences.
