The Executive Secretary of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, Dr. Shafic Suleman, on April 16, 2025, undertook a working visit to the Central Regional office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in Cape Coast. The purpose of the meeting was to foster collaboration, understand ECG's regional operations, and encourage improved revenue mobilization and network stability performance.
According to Dr. Suleman, the Commission wants to employ a more proactive approach to regulating utility services, rather than waiting for challenges to arise before tackling them. Thus, the first step was to create a virtual utility-stakeholder platform which will allow collaborative work among key stakeholders in the sector. He also discussed his concerns with respect to the issue of unstable power supply in the region. On the proliferation of fake meters, he assured the team that the Commission is working with relevant stakeholders to get a legislative instrument to standardize the procurement and usage of electricity meters in Ghana.
The Regional General Manager of ECG in the Central region, Ing. Emmanuel Lumor, noted that, ECG has 10 district offices with over 1 million electricity meters installed. Out of these installed meters, 790,000 are postpaid, whereas 385,000 are prepaid, and 163 are special load tariff (SLT) customers. He indicated that these figures keep growing steadily over the years.
Ing. Lumor indicated that on issues of proactiveness, the region carried out 21 Transformer injections and 15 transformer upgrades. This enables ECG to evacuate power from the Western region, Eastern region and Winneba in the Central region to augment power shortages in Cape Coast. This serves as a temporary measure to stabilizing power supply instead of managing the load in Cape Coast township and its environs.
According to Ing. Lumor, the regional ECG office has also replaced over 300,000 faulty prepaid meters across the region to improve the quality of service to customers. He noted that the regional office undertakes monthly community engagements to sensitize customers on salient power tips that will help improve the quality of service.
Ing. Lumor appealed to the PURC to help ECG in addressing the influx of fake meters, shortage of electric poles, vandalism of electric infrastructure, illegal connections, and debtors of ECG, among others.
The Director for Regional Operations and Consumer Services (Alhaji Jabaru Abukari) advised ECG to conduct regular educational exercises in various communities to sensitise them on the causes of power outages directly stemming from acts such as vandalism of transformers or other installations. “I advised ECG to put most community facilities on pre-paid meters as a means of reducing power debts, and to proactively trim vegetation that usually interferes with power lines during rainy seasons”.
The Director for Research and Corporate Affairs (Dr. Eric Kofi Obutey) added that, on the issue of quality of service, it is mostly one of the first things consumers complain about during radio shows. “Given this, there should be deliberate efforts towards informing customers of both planned and unplanned power outages, using either radio platforms or community center announcements”.
The Director for Energy Services and Performance Monitoring (Ing. Fred Amui Oblitey), inquired about the status of the Health, Safety, and Environment, (HSE) standards of ECG in the Central region, noting that most often, feedback received from PURC’s monitoring activities on this indicator is poor, thus, much attention should be given to this important issue. “Nevertheless, I commend you on the very good collaborative communication you have with GRIDCo, as compared to other regions” he noted.
Dr. Shafic, in his closing remarks, indicated the Commission's willingness to follow up on ECG’s challenges and provide interventions at the national level to ensure improvement in the quality of service to their customers.
