The national revenue mobilisation taskforce of the Electricity Company of Ghana disconnected three blocks at the police barracks at Osu in Accra due to an illegal connection (connected power directly without a metre).

The task force discovered the illegality on Tuesday while on its routine rounds to recover customer monies.

Aside from pursuing people who owe ECG debts, the task force takes advantage of the opportunity to look for illegal connections.

“Since it’s an illegal connection, we have the first right to disconnect before we deal with issues.” The manager in charge of external communications, Laila Abubakari told Citi News.

The disconnection is part of a national exercise to collect monies owed to ECG by customers and to also ascertain the condition of all meters.

“The Ghana police would have to come to ECG where a bill will be generated for them covering a period of 12 months,” she added.

She stated that power would be restored once they paid the surcharge.

“The administration block also owes, but due to security implications, we’ve spared that facility while we discuss further the amount involved. We consider the police accommodation facilities (blocks) a general facility, hence the disconnection”.

Meanwhile, the ECG Revenue Mobilization Taskforce was held hostage for about 30 minutes after they disconnected the Ghana Post Company over GH¢89,000 debt.

On Tuesday, the task force was at the premises to conduct its ongoing revenue mobilisation exercise when staff prevented it from leaving the Accra main office.

The disconnection exercise is in its second week of a month-long national exercise to recover GH5.7 billion from their books.

Source: adomonline.com

After winning 100 million Ugandan Shillings from sports betting, a pastor in a local church in Uganda abandoned his church members by closing the church.

Explaining his motivation, the overjoyed pastor revealed that the lottery was a gift from God and a quick way to get him out of poverty, which he had been experiencing.

He also revealed that he established the church as a source of income rather than through anointing.

“I must admit I opened this church due to greed but not anointing. I saw how several pastors make money by having large crowds and making false prophecies to attract more,” he opened up.

He stated that running a church without a calling became extremely difficult, resulting in sleepless nights. Burdened with guilt, the pastor chose to close it and seek other sources of income.

“As time went on, I realized this was not right; I started having sleepless nights and I would always have weird dreams.

“Before I opened this church, everything was normal on my side. Even without money, I did not have any strange dreams. So I decided to abolish this and look for other ways of making money” he said.

The pastor stated that he tried his luck at gambling, putting a whopping Ush1 million on the line.

“I had to pay for these games and surprisingly it took me about a month to receive them. They told me they had issues with their system and the process of securing games takes time. I almost gave up and called them scammers but they contacted me with the details and wow! I went full swing and got odd of 700,” he said.

He stopped going to church after discovering that he made far more money gambling than he had ever made operating a church in his entire life.

The Managing Director of Ghana’s Electricity Company, Samuel Dubik Mahama, has denied reports that the Ministry of Energy had been disconnected from the national grid due to unpaid bills for power supplied.

Mr Mahama hinted that reports of the Ministry’s disconnection are just a few of the innuendos thrown into the media sphere in an attempt to divert attention away from the power distribution company’s revenue mobilisation drive.

Mr Mahama revealed on Citi TV’s Point of View that government establishments owe 15% of the GH5.7 billion he hopes to recover within a month.

He emphatically disclosed that “The Ministry of Energy doesn’t owe us and the Ministry is exclusively on prepaid meters and that is the case with most of the MMDAs and state-owned enterprises.”

“We are not going to favour anybody and our main debtors are industry, they are not doing what they are supposed to do, and they are pretending not to know that they owe us,” Mr Mahama further lamented.

The power distribution company is currently on the ground, attempting to recover debts owed to it in order to improve its operations.

Mr Mahama also stated that the company is putting in place the necessary processes to digitalize power vending in order to increase revenue inflows and eliminate long lines at vending points.

“Hopefully, in the next month or two and with my digital process, queues will be a thing of the past because very soon consumers will be able to purchase ECG credit with their mobile devices with NFC connection.

“Very soon there will be no queues, and we are going to be customer-driven and even now postpaid customers are able to sit in the comfort of their homes to pay their electricity bill.”

Source: citinewsroom.com