THE Accra West Region of the Electricity Company of Ghana Ltd (ECG) has begun an exercise to replace more than 450,000 meters in its operational areas.
Under the project, the company plans to replace postpaid, non-smart prepaid and faulty meters in the region with MMS-compliant smart prepaid meters over the next five months.
The company said the meter replacement exercise formed part of its Loss Reduction Programme (LRP), an initiative to facilitate the installation of smart meters to improve energy accounting.
The programme will also ensure the availability of meters to meet service connection requests and reduce system losses.
While the Graphic Business agrees with the philosophy behind the exercise, we wonder why the replacement of meters has become an attractive venture to the ECG over the years.
We have observed that the ECG is fond of replacing old meters which are not faulty, with new ones its brands as more efficient and reliable to make it flexible for customers to purchase credit and for the company to reduce losses.
Reading from their reports, none of such exercises in the past have reduced system losses or brought power theft low, a phenomenon which begs the question, what is the rationale behind the exercise which costs the company huge sums of money?
The questions we ask again are, what happens to the old meters which are functioning effectively? What becomes of the customers who still have to queue for days, months and years in their quest to source a meter for their homes?
Presently, we are aware that the major challenge the company is facing has to do with the existence of old transformers within many localities and overaged electric lines running through residential areas. These often result in frequent localised power outages which create a lot of inconvenience for customers.
The Graphic Business believes that the ECG must set their priorities right and work to resolve teething problems first in a step-by-step manner to make their customers happy and not to undertake exercises whose objective sounds right, but on a scale of one to 10, does not fall even with average.
The power distribution company must be ready and able to identify homes that have faulty meters and replace them. It should also be able to locate areas where people do not have meters and supply them to reduce the corrupt practices associated with acquiring meters at their various offices.
The ECG has assured customers of the convenience the smart prepaid meters offer, saying that with the smart prepaid meters, a customer can buy credit for their meters from the comfort of their homes or anywhere they are by downloading the ECG Power app or using a short code.
It is intriguing that the company has many vendors it has accredited to sell credit on its behalf. These vendors have either invested in building their own stores or rented spaces to sell ECG credit to the general public. With these new meters, all such investments will go to waste within a twinkle of an eye. This is because, once a customer can buy credit on their phones, the use of the vendors becomes completely useless.
The ECG has also assured that outstanding balances on the old meter would be accounted for and transferred to the smart prepaid meters once fixed. Again, these promises in the past have not been completely fulfilled because many customers have been left stranded in their quest to ensure that the ECG kept to its word.
The exercise is obviously free but to us, based on the developments within the system, we find this exercise a completely misplaced priority and would, therefore, want to prevail on the company to ensure that while at it, it also finds the money to replace the overloaded transformers and weak electric poles and lines which have become death traps in many areas.
Source: graphiconline
