Power at Electoral Commission’s Takoradi sub-metro office disconnected since July over GHc 928 bill

• Posted on October 31, 2017October 31, 2017
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Since July 2017, staff of Electoral Commission’s (EC) sub-metro office in Takoradi report to work with the firm conviction that they will not do any official work throughout the day. This is due to some GHC 982.77 arrears the office owes Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) that has led to the disconnection of the electricity of the EC’s office in Takoradi.

www.233times.net investigation reveals that as part of the ECG’s exercise to migrate their customers from the post-paid to the prepaid meter, the EC’s sub-metro office in Takoradi which owed GHC 982.77 was asked to pay the arrears before the new meter would be installed after the ECG had taken off the post-paid meter.

Speaking to www.233times.net at the EC’s regional headquarters in Sekondi, Mr. Opoku-Mensah said “the bills are sent to the head office in Accra to be paid and most times, the bills are paid directly to the ECG so pre financing it would be a challenge. So we normally write to head office. At times they bring the cheque here, at times they pay the bills directly to the ECG. Now when we submitted this bill, there is no logo (ECG’s logo) on the bill but all the bills go to the same place so they wrote back that they don’t see this as a bill and therefore we must go for another one. But this is what was given to us by Electricity Company of Ghana.”

“We send the bills to the head office but they have to go through internal audit before payment is done but looking at this bill which has no ECG logo, it raises questions. With this type of bill given to us, it has some symbols which I don’t even know what they mean” Mr. Opoku-Mensah told www.233times.net.

According to the Western Region’s EC boss, he asked the District Officer to follow up on the bill and he was given the bill which has no ECG logo nor barcode like previous bills had therefore raising doubts as to whether that is an official bill from the ECG or it was designed by someone “because they suspect that this is not a good one, this is a fake one.”

www.233times.net checks at ECG head office in Takoradi revealed that the bill that was given to the EC was a unit recovery bill that gives the election organizers the details of their arrears of electricity so they could request for the bill which will have their logo on it.

According to deep throats, the office that the EC’s sub-metro office in Takoradi is occupying “was given to them by Ghana Highways Authority. The EC took over the office with the outstanding electricity arrears by the Ghana Highways Authority.”

Author: Nana Kwesi Coomson (www.233times.net) @nkcoomson on Twitter