Mr Bismark Otoo, General Manager of the Accra East Region of ECG, said the amnesty, which commenced on June 7, 2022, and was scheduled to end on July 6,  2022, was to allow for correction of the illegality and fight power losses.

He explained that illegal connection was a significant factor in the 28 per cent distribution losses that was annually recorded by the ECG.

Mr Otoo was speaking in Accra during an interaction with journalists to discuss the company’s strategies to improve visibility and efficiency.

Following the amnesty period, Mr Otoo said a taskforce would be deployed to the various districts to check for illegal connections and faulty metres, which were responsible for power losses.

Customers who failed to use the opportunity offered by the amnesty period to report illegal connections, he stated, would be made to face the full rigourof the law, including publication of their names, to shame them for power theft and prosecution if necessary.

The General Manager indicated that special arrangements would be made for such customers to be able to pay any outstanding debt that they might have accrued due to the illegal connection.

The company, he noted, was also in the process of designing a proactive strategy to deal with the problem of “goro boys” in the sector.

In addition to the “goro boys,” the General Manager said some workers also created inexistent faults to extort from customers for their personal interests.

He advised the public to report directly to any ECG office their challenges for immediate redress and verify the identity of staff before engaging them.

Mr William Boateng, Director of Public Relations, ECG, said the company was in discussions with the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) to be able to enforce a three-month disconnection for customers who failed to report their wrongdoings for rectification.

“We are pleading with the PURC to consider this form of sanction. We want to see any customer who fails to report an illegality as a dishonest one.

We want to be allowed to disconnect such a customer for three months. We believe this will be deterrent enough and discourage people from engaging in power theft,” he stated.

In response to concerns about low number of prosecutions, Mr Boateng noted that the company was focused on stopping illegal connection and retrieve money lost through illegal connection.