By Godfred A. Polkuu
Bolgatanga, Aug. 13, GNA – The Energy Commission has admonished members of the public to verify labels and information on electrical appliances before purchasing them.
That, the Commission said, would ensure that consumers purchased quality and energy-efficient electrical appliances for effective energy conservation.
Ghana’s Parliament recently passed 17 new regulations and revised three existing ones on electrical appliances, aimed to strengthen the Standards and Labeling regime, expand its scope, and enhance enforcement mechanisms.
The regulations covered a wide range of appliances, including refrigerators, air conditioners and microwaves to ensure compliance with Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS), and introduced star ratings, which required the registration of all models of regulated appliances.
Speaking at a stakeholder engagement in the Bolgatanga Municipal in the Upper East Regional Mr. Hubert Nsoh Zan, Assistant Manager of the Energy Efficiency Regulation of the Commission, who gave the advice, said the regulation was intended to protect the Ghanaian consumer.
“We need to protect the consumer by making sure that they can verify the labels and the information on them. We have come up with the GH Certified Appliance App, which we encourage consumers to download, and use to verify the labels they see when they go to shops.
“In addition to that, the new labels now come with a QR code, which consumers can easily scan and then verify. Once you don’t see the label, you are buying at your own risk,” Mr. Zan said.
The stakeholder engagement was organized by the Commission in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The meeting was aimed at engaging key stakeholders including officials from the Ghana National Fire Service, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission, the Ghana Tourism Authority, and the media among others in Ghana’s regulated appliances sector.
The Assistant Manager said in terms of electricity bills, the impact evaluation indicated that about US$ 1 billion was saved and explained, “We looked at the consumption of a used refrigerator which consumes about 1200 kilowatts hours per year.
“And looking at the quantities that were coming in, versus the tariff rate, we realized that a lot of Ghanaians were going to be paying so much bills,” he said.
He urged importers of electrical appliances to ensure they registered their products with the right documentation before they imported them into the country.
On the successes of the Commission, Mr. Zan recalled that the government in 2007, requested the distribution of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) to replace the incandescent, and did a similar exercise for refrigerators in 2012, where people had the opportunity to replace their old refrigerators with new ones.
“Now we have the eco-fridge which looks at the flexibility of payment. We believe that is a discussion we should be having as a country.
“Instead of going for a cheap second-hand obsolete appliance or new inefficient appliance, let’s find a kind of payment plan for working Ghanaians to be able to acquire the quality, efficient appliance with flexible payment terms,” he said.
Mr. Zan further advocated the introduction of energy efficiency and conservation into the basic school curriculum to enable children at the basic school to appreciate the need to conserve and judiciously use energy.
“We believe that introducing energy efficiency and conservation into the curriculum will help the children so that the next generation of leaders will know how energy efficiency works and how energy conservation will help their families,” he said.
GNA