ECG resolves BOT vending challenges

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has said that it has resolved challenges that it encountered with its Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) payment system, which was faced by customers in Korle-Bu, Dansoman, Kaneshie and Achimota.

At a press conference, the Managing Director of ECG Samuel Boakye-Appiah apologized for the inconvenience caused customers, particularly commercial customers.

“On Thursday 7th December 2017, we maintained a customer desk service of 40 to attend to customers at the project office where the team of BOT system administrators are located. As usual, they worked the whole day to 12 midnight, dealing with the backlog of deposited faulty vending cards which need reactivation. Today, experts were able to re-engineer the system to reduce the human intervention and therefore we are operating a higher automated system that runs faster than the previous one, and we have increased the service desks from 40 to 60.”

“We have also been able to set up customer service desks at the Kaneshie District Office, which is within the Avenor office of the Accra West Region, and also at the Achimota District where customers under these districts should contact for the reactivation of their cards. With respect to the two other districts, namely Dansoman and Korle-bu, we wish to appeal to customers to deposit faulty cards after it has been proven to be dysfunctional with their names and phone numbers. These will be reactivated,” he added.

Some customers of ECG, who use prepaid metres, on Wednesday (December 6, 2017) stormed various ECG offices in some parts of Accra to buy prepaid credit as they have been unable to get refills from third-party vendors for the past three days.

Boakye-Appiah, also indicated that the ECG will soon begin the sale of prepaid electricity credit online through its yet-to-be-launched mobile application.

He said the project will be piloted before it is rolled out officially for public use.

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“Going forward, the company intends to ensure that all ECG payment metering system will be smart devoid of customers visiting vending points, but instead utilizing a mobile application to purchase credit online.”

“Some of our customers on credit meters can also receive their bills and pay their bills through the mobile application,” he added.

He was certain this new development will help avoid a recurrence of the current challenges ECG is facing with some of its prepared systems in the country.