Ghana’s technical regulator for electricity – Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) – has imposed a fine of five million, eight hundred and sixty-eight thousand Ghana cedis (GH¢5,868,000) on board members of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for breaching regulatory rules by carrying out power outages without notifying consumers between January and March this year.
Each of the nine-member board of the power distribution company, including the Managing Director, will pay about GH¢652,000 per a calculation by this portal.
The fine was originally slapped on ECG, but the Commission, in a letter, explained that it could not allow the company to bear the cost due to the nature of its business and the likely impact on service delivery.
It thus passed on the fine to the company’s board members which failed to provide strategic direction to ensure the provision of safe, adequate, efficient, reasonable and non-discriminatory service to consumers.
“For failure to comply with the three-day statutory notice on notification and publication of planned outages required under Regulation 39 of L.I. 2413, the Commission in accordance with Regulation 45 of L.I. 2413, also imposed a regulatory charge of 3,000 penalty units on ECG for each of the 163 breaches, amounting to GH¢ 5,868,000.”
“The Commission has determined that having regard to the nature of ECG’s ownership and business, the imposition of the penalty of GH¢5,868,000 on ECG would be counterproductive, as payment from ECG’s revenue would have a rebounding adverse effect on quality of service and consumers who pay tariffs to the company.
“For that reason, in the interest of justice and to protect the interests of consumers, the Commission shall hold the Board Members of ECG who were in office from 1 January to 18 March 2024 liable for the payment of the GH¢5,868,000,” a portion of the letter said.
It would be recalled that the regulator made three requests to the ECG with the timelines of March 25, March 27, and April 2, 2024.
The request from ECG by PURC followed anger from the public demanding that ECG should issue load-shedding timetable for them to know when they would have power in order to plan due to power outages.
The information requested related to the tariff revenue allocation under the Cash Waterfall Mechanism (CWM), the provision of regulatory audit data and the submission of information related to operational matters, as well as the provision of other regulatory audit data.
ECG responded to the Commission’s request.
However, the PURC letter said, “The Commission established from its analysis of data submitted by ECG that there were 4142 outages to consumers within ECG’s operational areas between January and March 2024.
Out of this number, 165 representing 3.98% of the total outages were ECG-planned outages.
“Further analysis showed that of the 165 ECG planned outages, 40 were supported by public notices, while there were no notices for the remaining 125 outages.
“Further, 38 of the 40 notices did not comply with the requisite three-day statutory notice prescribed under Regulation 39 of L.I. 2413.
“This indicates that in 163 instances of planned outages, ECG did not comply with the law”.
The amount is to be paid into a dedicated fuel account under the joint control of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance on or before 30th May 2024.
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com
