Ghana: Collaborate to Sustain War On Fake Meters

On Wednesday, the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) intercepted 700 fake meters at Dabala Junction checkpoint in the Volta Region.

According to the Customs officers on duty that day, they found the meters during a thorough inspection of a bus heading to Accra from Aflao.

Interestingly, none of the passengers on the bus claimed ownership of them and so were impounded by the Customs officers.

The Ghanaian Times could not readily ascertain what the GRA was going to do next, but we know the Authority knows its work and so will carry out the necessary investigations to identify the owner(s) of the fake meters and their collaborators and bring them to book.

Meanwhile, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG)has come in to educate the public about what fake meters are and the dangers associated with them.

It has, thus, appealed to the public to not procure electricity meters from anywhere else but the accredited or mandated organisations.

The ECG has also asked the public to help it fight against the menace of fake meters in the country.

We are using this editorial as our contribution to winning that fight and so like to provide here some important information from the power provider.

According to the ECG,fake meters are first and foremost those imported by individuals, groups or organisations other than the ECG itself, Northern Electricity

Distribution Company (NEDCO) and the Ministry of Energy.

It explains that these three organisations are so far the only ones mandated by law and given the licenceto import meters into the country.

This means anyone procuring an electricity meter from any other source does so at his or her own risk.

The public should in addition note that procuring a meter from even an employee of any of the organisationswithout the due authority is illegal.

We believe if members of the public will abide by only this piece of information about acquisition or procurement of electricity meters, there will be no motivation for any individual or organisation to import meters because there will be no market for them.

This brings in the question “what creates the need for the fake meters in the country?”

Over the years, the ECG itself, for instance, made it so cumbersome for the public to acquire the meters and so some of their employees and middlemen facilitated the acquisition and that eased the problem of prospective customers getting the meters.

We believe as the ECG wages the war against fake meters, it will correspondingly ease its process of granting meters to the public.

The ECG says the fake meters are substandard as they are not tested and

calibrated to meet the required standards of our country and so can make users incur higher electricity bills.

Besides, since the fake meters are illegal, anyone using one, if found, can be charged with a criminal offence and prosecuted.

The worst aspect of the whole matter is that the substandard meters can cause fire outbreaks and the repercussions are obvious – destruction of property and death.

It is about time the ECG, NEDCO and the Ministry of Energy collaborated with main stakeholders like GRA Customs Division, the police, other security agencies, the district assemblies and the media to sustain the war on fake meters.