The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Samuel Dubik Mahama, has said that GHS5.7 billion is owed to the state power distributor.
He said the company would intensify the collection of the debts.
“Every month we will show up to collect the debts,” he added.
On March 22, he revealed it on the Ghana Tonight program on TV3.
On Monday, March 20, the ECG was engaged in a debt recovery operation.
The business claimed to have implemented a digital system to ensure that the managing Director of the business can directly monitor the amount of money obtained from the debt recovery effort.
According to Mr. Mahama, since the activity began, they have been able to collect between 40 and 50 million Cedis everyday.
“I can each day 40 to 50 million cedis every day, we are expecting it to go up,” he said.
As part of the debt recovery, the task force paid visits to organizations such the Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL), the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), and the Parliament.
Speaking to journalists after the exercise on Monday, March 20, the External Communications Manager of ECG, Laila Abubakar, said, “The national task force is the one that is in charge of the state-owned enterprises, the ministries, departments, and agencies, and so we have been going with them, we visited Parliament House, they were owing about GHS 13 million; they have committed to paying GHS 8.5 million, and we saw evidence of that.
“We went to the Ghana Airport Company; they owed arrears of GHS28 million of which they made GHS10 million payment instantly just when we got there so we have given them 48 hours to make the full payment.”
She added, “Now, we are here at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, they also owe arrears of about GHS6 million, but they have explained to us that because of the way they run their operations, they wouldn’t be able to cough out the money for us instantly, they have had some discussions with the Minister of Information and the National Media Commission together with the Ministry of Energy and there was some sort of agreement last years. However, ECG’s point is that there has not been any movement on the debt that is remaining.
“They have explained to us they have a system and they are going to get some money and pay because they have to find innovative ways of coming up with the money and so we have been giving permission to leave them for now for 48 hours.”
The ECG has also been disconnecting homes and industries over debts.
Laila Abubakar said “In Tema, we have received photos of disconnections happening in residences, we have received photos of them in some of the industries in Tema and they are being disconnected.
“I am hoping that by the end of the day, we should be able to see a lot of money coming in into our accounts.
“Our system has been digitized in such a way that by the end of the day the Managing Director will be able to see how much we have recouped from this exercise and so we will report in a timely basis how much we are making on a weekly basis.”