With the availability of the meters, the company promises to clear its backlog of over 5,000 meter applications in about a month and gave an assurance that customers would have meters applied for supplied within 10 days of payment.

The General Manager, ECG, Central Region, Emmanuel Lumor, who made this known, said the company had more than enough meters to supply, describing the exercise as a win-win situation for the company and its customers.

"We have benchmarked the system in such a way that any customer that walks to ECG for service connection, within 10 days that service would be provided," he stated.

The LRP is an initiative by the ECG management to install Meter Management System (MMS)-compliant smart meters in order to improve energy accounting. 
In the Central Region, the LRP is being implemented in five ECG districts including Kasoa North District, Kasoa South District, Agona Swedru District, Winneba District and Cape Coast Metropolis.

The project is also aimed at ensuring the availability of meters to meet service connection requests and reduce system losses.

Last Thursday, officials of the company held a brief ceremony to mark the official commencement of the project in the region.

Mr Lumor said the project would also ensure the immediate replacement of all faulty meters.

He admitted that before the project commenced, the company had a challenge meeting customer demand for meters, making customers wait months for connection.

He indicated that with the project, customers did not have any excuses for illegal connections, warning that anybody found to have engaged in illegal connection or tampering with the meters would be made to face the law.

The Cape Coast District Manager of ECG, Ebenezer Kwakye Sarkwa, said the project would impact positively on the district's performance.

"When the customer is satisfied it impacts our revenue and so we are happy about this project,” he added.

The Central Regional Commercial Manager of ECG, Simon Kpabitey Agyemani, said the services had been categorised into standard, express and premium, saying with all of the services, a customer was assured of services within five and 10 days for the standard and express and 24 hours for premium applicants.

The Project Manager, Dr Belinda Yeboah Dwamena, advised workers to work harder to reduce losses to help build a stronger revenue base for the company.

She also urged ECG contract services providers to be professional and to ensure customer satisfaction.

Some members of the public the Daily Graphic spoke to new development said it was a good initiative which would ease customer frustrations in the application for meters.