The Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) has reported a revenue loss of about 61 percent at Nyankpala in the Tolon district in the Northern Region due to illegal connection activities. The unlawful acts have persisted for several months now despite numerous engagements between officials of NEDCo and the Chiefs and people of the community to curb the worrying phenomenon.
Mr. Abdulai Danjumah, a Customer Service Officer at NEDCo in a radio interview in Tamale monitored by THE CUSTODIAN said the power distributor has observed with worry the magnitude of losses emanating from the Tolon/Nyankpala station.
“We checked the losses and it was 61% and when we traced it we realized it wasn’t coming from Kumbungu or Tolon but rather it was coming from only Nyankpala. When a monitoring team went into the community, we saw that the people had connected wires to the main transmission lines to power their homes and we cautioned them against that because such acts endanger our transformers and cause imbalance in the electricity transmission but it all fell on deaf ears.
“Before we realized somewhere around October 2022, two transformers were destroyed; this was the time of the Regent and he pleaded and assured us that he was going to talk to the people on the matter and promise it will seize,” he pointed out.
Mr. Danjumah disclosed the replacement of the two power equipment cost the company about GHS110,000 and intimated that the assemblyman for the area was a witness to that.
“After we fixed it, we thought it necessary to do customer education [perhaps they don’t understand the situation] on several occasions, thinking the problem will be solved but upon another entry into the community, we met the same situation again,” he lamented.
The Customer Service Officer stated the issue was subsequently reported to the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for their intervention to address the menace.
He narrated that the PURC also invited officials from the headquarters in Accra to engage the community members and elders on the matter and cautioned them [residents] to desist from such unlawful practices.
“They again registered their regrets and reassured the PURC that it will not do it again. They also told the PURC that they experience low voltage and frequent power outages and that we also removed their meters and that we demanded for them to make payments before we restore power back and they don’t have such monies.
“After that complaint, we invited the victims and had a payment agreement with them which means that each person will deposit a certain amount to defray the debt and also make payments for their current bills. We also invested GHS342,000 cedis to upgrade the network in the community – we changed their poles, additional lines, transformers and new meters” he revealed.
Meanwhile, Management of NEDCo the company is losing as much as 45% of electricity it sells to consumers every month in the Northern Operational Area.
The figure is largely attributed to the rampant cases of power theft and non-payment of electricity bills by customers in the area.
However, PURC regulations only allows for a lost margin of 22 percent in respective of the electricity distribution company.
NEDCo has previously lamented how this is affecting the operations of the company and the delivery of their mandate in providing quality and uninterrupted electricity supply to consumers.
