A customer service officer at the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCO) in the Upper East Region, Alimata Bamie, has bemoaned that the attitude of individuals and institutions not paying their bills on time is leading to the accumulation of those bills and making it difficult for them to settle.
According to the customer service officer, the inability of institutions and individuals to settle their bills on time is adversely putting a financial burden on them, and they would be embarking on a mass disconnection exercise.
She said this has become necessary because “human beings, as we are, payment of bills is not always coming unless you go out there and ask for it before customers pay.”
The customer service officer noted that the first and second exercises undertaken by the company to mobilize revenue could not meet the expected target, hence the need for them to embark on the exercise to mobilize funds to also settle their debts.
Ms. Bamie indicated that NEDCO owes the Volta River Authority (VRA) 1.6 billion cedis as a power generator and Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRICO) some large quantum of money as a power transporter.
She revealed this when she spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio`s Daybreak Upper East Show about its planned exercise in the North East and Upper East Regions to mobilize 25 million cedis of its debts owed by institutions and individuals.
The officer cited, for instance, that the Upper East Regional Hospital, which is the highest debtor in the region, owed the company over 3.5 million cedis, while Bolgatantga Technical University owed over 800,000 cedis.
“The Regional Hospital signed an agreement with us to be paying GH50, 000 every month in addition to their monthly consumption, which is over 200,000, but they only made that payment once in June, and the Bolgatanga Technical University also agreed to be paying GH20,000 every month, paid only twice, and defaulted”, she stated.
She also disclosed that residential and non-residential customers owed the company about 156 million cedis.
Source:A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Gilbert Azeem Tiroog|Bolgatanga
