The Eastern Regional Office of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission organized a stakeholder engagement at Akim Oda in the Birim Central Municipality on August 2, 2024. The collaborative program brought together; the Electricity Company of Ghana Ltd (ECG), Ghana Water Limited (GWL), Ghana Beauticians Association (GHABA), Association of Small-Scale Industries (ASSI), Ghana Traders Association (GTA), Welders and Wood Workers Association, Brim South District Assembly and the general public.
The stakeholder engagement was the second of its kind undertaken this year by the Eastern Regional Office of the Commission. The engagement was geared towards the attainment and consolidation of the Commission’s theme (strategic impact) for the year 2024, which focuses on Self-improvement, Transparency, Enforcement, and Proactiveness (S.T.E.P.).
The program also sought to empower consumers with knowledge of the PURC Tariff Reckoner and the PURC Electricity Consumption Estimator (PECE) applications. Participants were provided with a practical demonstration on how these applications could be downloaded and applied. The use of these applications by consumers will enable individuals to independently compute their bills, verify its integrity and to report to the service provider any concerns identified.
The Eastern Regional Manager of the Commission sensitized the audience on the establishment of the Commission, its role and functions, recent tariff adjustments, as well as energy and water conservation tips. He also highlighted categories of complaints received by the Commission and the complaint procedure. Customers were advised to replace obsolete appliances with energy-efficient ones to enable them conserve energy.
Furthermore, stakeholders at the program were apprised of the Commission’s ability to resolve 91% of the 1,024 complaints it received for the first half of the year 2024. Twenty-seven (27) of these complaints accounted bordered on billing adjustments amounting to GHS 120,183.43 for both electricity and water. On the other hand, with the assistance of the Commission, ECG recovered GHS31,854.30 from customers.
The Commission also educated participants on the new capital contribution policy, while ECG educated stakeholders on their distribution operations. Adequate information was provided on how challenges with billing systems are addressed. ECG also showcased to participants at the program, a device which generated instant bills to customers who had never received any. ECG re-emphasized the need for consumers to conserve energy and provided them with fliers on energy domestic appliance consumption charts.
The Ghana Water Limited educated consumers on the flow of water from production to distribution. The company listed challenges which affected water supply beginning with burst transmission pipelines, illegal mining, and ongoing road construction activities. Customers were encouraged to pay their bills promptly since that was the only source of revenue for the company. Payment of these bills will assist in the expansion of the company’s services.
Questions raised by stakeholders centered on accumulated bills, billing anomalies, the use of the cashless system for payment, pole defects, energy-efficient appliances, the cost of new service connections, and meter theft. The utility service providers took turns to address the issues and offered their contact numbers to consumers for further assistance if required. A total of one hundred and forty-seven (147) consumers were documented to have participated in the program.
Participants were grateful to PURC, ECG, and GWL for organizing the educative program and empowering them to independently compute their bills with the PURC tariff reckoner.