You can’t steal electricity anymore – Bawumia announces

Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said it will soon be impossible for anybody to steal power from the national grid through illegal connection since the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has acquired a new technology that will make power theft impossible.

Speaking at the launch of the governing New Patriotic Party’s 2020 manifesto on Saturday, 23 August 2020, Dr Bawumia said: “We’ll also want to reduce the cost of power. This is a major problem for businesses”.

He added: “We have so much in losses from ECG. About 40 per cent of the power that is produced is lost from ECG and also from transmission and we’re going to introduce new technology from the ECG perspective”.

Dr Bawumia said ECG has “piloted a new remote-sensing technology, which is working very beautifully and we’re going to begin implementation”.

“ECG has done so well in piloting this remote-sensing technology and I have some bad news for those who are stealing power: with this remote-sensing technology, it will no longer be possible to steal power from ECG”, he announced.

Below is the NPP’s plan for the energy sector for the next four years:

Over the next four years, our priority in the energy and petroleum sector is to increase efficiency and ensure value-for-money for all activities, including reliable and affordable power generation and distribution, and further development of the oil and gas sector, as well as renewable sources. We will pursue this goal through the following measures:

• enforcing competitive procurement of power, the least cost fuel procurement, and minimising excess capacity charges through the ongoing renegotiation exercise to improve upon the financial health of the sector

• reducing losses, particularly in power distribution, by ensuring ECG and NEDCo implement incentive-based loss reduction targets for all District Managers

• significantly improving revenue collection with the implementation of remote sensing technology which is currently being piloted by ECG

• completing ongoing rural electrification projects to ensure transformation of our rural economies

• continuing the Auction-Based Licensing strategy for exploratory Oil Blocks to ensure value for money, and

• enforcing Local Content policies for the Upstream and Downstream sub-sectors.