The figure is made up of over 1,000 requests for new services and over 2,000 requests for separate metres, Mr Ali Toporira, Tema Regional Commercial Manager, ECG, disclosed this on Thursday during a media encounter organized by the Company.

Mr Tomporira observed that apart from the Krobo and Ada districts which were using postpaid metres, the other districts were using designated prepaid metres with the affected three districts mostly using the e-cash which was the first type of pre-paid metres to be introduced in the Region. .

He indicated that the over 4,000 applications were both new and existing customers who had paid for the provision of the metres which were in short supply adding that about 2,000 faulty ones also needed replacement as they could be serviced. .

He explained that with the faulty ones, when they eventually went off thus preventing customers from accessing power,  temporary supply of electricity was arranged  until.new.metres were fixed.

According to him, getting to the end of the year 2018, his outfit received  1,000  metres which  mostly replaced the faulty ones adding that they hoped to take delivery of the rest soon to serve all customers in the area.

He indicated that where as  with the separate metre application, officers could use their discretion on approving a request,supply of metres to new applicants was mandatory.The Commercial Manager said  a project to replace all e-cash metres in the South district with MBH metres would be carried out this year to  solve the supply shortage issue.

Meanwhile, Mr Joseph Mensah Forson, General Manager, ECG Tema Region, has indicated that the use of  foreign metres in  some of the Region's  districts  had reduced significantly as his outfit and the Police were tracking the suppliers of those metres.

Mr Forson explained that those metres were foreign to the ECG because they did not have the Company's name embossed on them, while some had Chinese on them adding that some also came from companies ECG had never traded with.