The Minister for Energy, Dr. Mathew Opoku Prempeh, says government has paid all debts owed the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as of March 2020, to help improve the company’s liquidity.

The government had initially paid an average of GHC2 billion directly to ECG’s suppliers (i.e VRA, IPPs and GRIDCo) to defray GoG’s indebtedness to ECG.

This is therefore the final batch of payment for the debt of GHS 2.63 billion.

Speaking to the press, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh stated that: “Government has acknowledged in March 2020, [that] ECG made a publication that government owed it an amount of money. [With] that government has paid, the GHS 2.63 billion. Government was paying on behalf of all ministries, departments, agencies, which were not metered, built or not paying. So government cleared debt out of ECG.”

The Manhyia South Constituency lawmaker further listed the formation of the revenue task force, acceleration of smart prepaid meter deployment, and boundary metering as some of the revenue-increasing strategies to defray the cost of production and distribution.

“A task force [would be constituted] to make sure that those who are bypassing and not paying would pay so that we could pay GRIDCO, VRA and other [energy] generators. The smart prepaid meter will help us to see what’s happening to those we are billing,” he said.

He further explained that the boundary metering will help in collating information on the amount of energy consumed by each section of the population in a particular geographical location.

This guides in identifying problems such as illegal connections and helps to make “necessary recoveries.”

Referencing the Energy Sector recovery program, he stated that citizens do not seem to understand PURC’s price regulation, therefore it proposed “an open transparent methodology and time setting by the PURC.”

In relation to the ‘dumsor’ timetable which was scheduled to end Monday, 17th May, 2021, the Energy Minister is confident that the load shedding exercise in communities that receive electricity from the Pokuase Bulk Supply Point will end as scheduled.

However, he was unsure whether there would be an extension of the power outage schedule or not.

Last week, the Electricity Company of Ghana rolled out an eight-day power outage schedule for some parts of the national capital to enable it undertake maintenance works on some GRIDCO facilities.