Tema, Nov. 5, GNA – Mr Christopher Apawu, Tema South District Engineer of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has said 95 per cent of electricity prepaid meters in the district have successfully been changed to Clou Smart Meters.
The ECG Tema Region from January 2020 begun a project to replace all existing prepaid meters with the Clou ones in the region mainly within the Afienya, Nungua, Tema Township and its environs as part of the Company’s drive to improve power convenience for customers.
Mr Apawu briefing the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) during an ordinary meeting said the project started in the District which span from communities one to six, fishing harbour, Tema Newtown and parts of the industrial area.
He said the project was still ongoing and the remaining five per cent would be duly replaced adding however that they acknowledged that some customers had been complaining about some challenges they were facing with the smart meters.
He explained that complaints of meter reading fast had reached them explaining that customers must check their connections as the smart meter was programmed in a way that any power that passed through the system would be recorded.
Mr Apawu added that overaged cables, and earth among others leads to leakages which the meter might record making customers to think it was the smart meters that were stealing their power.
“Most installations in Tema are old, since the building of the structures many years ago up till now there has been no change in cables, these leads to leakages which the meter reads,” he said.
The Tema South ECG Engineer said residents should use the services of Energy Commission’s certified engineers to do further assessment including proper wiring audit on their premises to know where the problem was.
Speaking on some challenges faced by his outfit, he said power theft and stealing of its power fuse from transformers was worrying as some recalcitrant residents in the area always removed the fuses to sell its copper component 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.”
According to him, even when they locked the transformers with padlocks, the miscreants broke them to carry out their nefarious activities and there 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 sentence while another was still being trialled by the court, yet still the act was still ongoing.
GNA