Tema, Nov. 2, GNA – The Tema South District Office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has appealed to Assembly Members and residents within its catchment area to help the Company fight the high incidents of fuse theft from its transformers.
Mr Christopher Apawu, ECG Tema South District Engineer, made the appeal during the third ordinary meeting of the second session of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA).
Mr Apawu said it was worrying that junkies in the area always stole the fuses from the transformers to remove component from it which they sell as scraps.
He added that the most affected places in the district was the transformers located at El-Paso and opposite the Zenith Bank near the TMA.
“It is rampant especially in Communities one, two, three and six, every day about three fuses are removed from the transformers on an average, and it is the cause of major outages in the area,” he said.
According to him, even when they locked the transformers with padlocks, the miscreants break it to carry out their nefarious activities and called for the collaboration of the residents to bring them to book.
He noted that such activities were not carried out by one person as according to him, the Company through the police successfully prosecuted one person in court who was serving a jail term, while another was still being tried by the court, yet still the act was still ongoing.
“They mostly do this at dawn, so when you are sleeping and your light goes off all of a sudden, just peep through the window, especially those staying near the transformers to check and apprehend such thieves,” he said.
He also urged residents against engaging in power theft and illegal connections as the act deprived the Company of the needed funds to pay the various Independent Power Producers (IPP) that supply it with power to be distributed to customers.
He said the company would prosecute anyone found culpable and therefore reiterated the need not to engage in such activities, while calling on residents to report such acts to the Company for some rewards.
GNA