THE Western Regional office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is replacing the existing meters in the Sekondi/Takoradi metropolis with a more advanced electro-cash prepaid meters.
This new system is not going down well with the public, since it has a means of checking waste in the system by ensuring the demand side management mechanism to place the consumers in control of their daily consumption.
According to the Regional Public Relations Officer of ECG, Mr Adjei Larbi, the new meter would guarantee a more efficient usage of power by customers.
He explained that with the demand side management side of the new meter, it would be very difficult for anybody to cheat the system.
“Mostly, what happens with the old meter is that people try cheating the system by connecting power from the load side, thereby diverting energy that should have passed through the meter. But with the new meter, there is a censoring mechanism that once the customer tampers with the power on the load side it will cut supply to the said customer automatically,” he said.
The interesting part when operating the new meter, he said, was that apart from the officials of the ECG, no other person could touch it. “Therefore if the customer tries to cheat the system, supply will cut until he or she reports to our office for the situation to be rectified.”
Mr Larbi said there was a lot of waste in the system, and therefore, if customers were in control and decided when and how to switch their power on and off it would prolong their credit.
The PRO said the exercise would take about nine months to complete in Takoradi from where they would move to other parts of the metropolis.
He said one of the difficulties they faced in their quest to change the meters was public support.
“We have been serving them with the old meter for so long and it is just fair that when we are going to switch to a more advanced technology, we prompt our customers through various public forums, but only a few people attended those forums we organised for them,” he said.
“I must say that with that we are very disappointed because, before we organised the forums we went round, educated our customers and gathered information on when it would be appropriate for the forums to be held and we organised the forums based on the feedback we got from the field but the patronage was very poor,” he said.
He said even though patronage was low the regional office had set up customer care desks at the office for those who were having difficulties with their meters and that had so far proved to be helping greatly.
Mr Larbi urged the customers to take their time to acquaint themselves with the features on the device.
“It prompts you when you need to recharge, how much money you have left in Ghana Cedis and how many days you have, therefore, you are in total control of your own consumption.”
“On the meter, if the display shows 25 then you have a balance of GH¢2.50 and the days are estimated in hours and calculated from the customer’s average consumption over a 24-hour period using the tariff applicable at the point of consumption,” he said.
That aside, he said, the new meter would also avert the problems landlords faced with their tenants over unpaid electricity bills, “because, with the new device, there is no disconnection, no estimated bills, and tenants will not move out leaving behind unpaid bills.
“Finally, I will like to advice those whose meters have not yet been changed to settle their bills because there will be a final reading at the point of change and programmed into the system and if that amount is not settled, there is no way the vending machine will accept the customer’s smart loading card,” he advised.
No comments:
Post a Comment