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The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has received a budget approval of GH¢9.7 million to undertake new projects in 11 districts of the Western Region.
The projects hope to boost operations and ensure the system becomes more robust.
The General Manager, ECG, Western Region, Mr Emmanuel Justice Ofori, disclosed this on Thursday when he briefed the media on the projects for the region in 2025 and the performance of the sector.
He added that, “We have 22 high profile projects aimed at interconnecting most of ECG’s system to ensure that when there are outages, we can easily connect to the network through other means. The money would go to ensure that citizens within the region have stable light to operate their businesses and power other sectors of the economy.”
Furthermore, Mr Ofori said ECG in 2025, would introduce a pilot premium service for those seeking to get new service and requests to be connected the same day, adding that “if it becomes successful, we will extend it to the other districts.”
On revenue, he mentioned that, Western Region had been given a target of GH¢41million per week for 2025, adding that in 2024, the target performance was about 80 per cent.
According to Mr Ofori, ECG in 2024, embarked on 37 projects valued at GH¢3.9million to enhance operations, facilitate system total stability, reduce power outages and improve customer quality supply.
Already, the GM stated that in 2023, ECG started a project named ‘the loss reduction projects’ with the promise to install 40,000 new smart meters at Sekondi, Agona and Tarkwa, and so far, a total installation of 52,681 had been achieved.
He told journalists that in 2024, ECG as part of revenue improvement, undertook a lot of operations code-named ‘Operation Zero’, and ‘Operation Keep the Light On’ to rake in vital cash for operations.
“This operations are aimed at improving our revenue production as revenue. We need money to do a lot of thing, pay the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and then do other things that will help stabilise our power system in our country. So this exercises help in ensuring that we collect adequate revenue to meet our obligation and help revamp the network,” Mr Ofori explained.
This year, he assured, ECG would continue to step up revenue mobilisation efforts and urged the media to assist in informing customers about this operations.
Moreover, on customer convenience, ECG, he indicated that, they aimed at making consumption of electricity more convenient to all customers and had therefore put in place measures that helped a customer to purchase credit without hustle, for example, through the mobile app.
On challenges, Mr Ofori identified cable thefts and the vandalisation of some substation had been a huge headache in achieving stability in power distribution, as some people even started cutting live wires.
FROM CLEMENT ADZEI
BOYE, TAKORADI
