Electricity bills to go down from July 1 – Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has given indication that effective July 1, Ghanaians would start experiencing some reliefs in electricity bills.

According to the President, The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is set to implement a new billing cycle which would address concerns of overbilling.

An investigation into the recent overbilling undertaken by the ECG and other state agencies seems to have found the course of the problem and some recommendations have been made.

Addressing market women, and traders at the Madina market on his accounting to the people tour of the Greater Accra region which resumed on Tuesday June 21, President Mahama said “I have given them the opportunity to go ahead to implement the solutions they’ve come up with."

“Because the electricity billing is done in monthly cycles, they have to start on the first of a month with the billing cycle. So I have asked Ghanaians to exercise patience, from first July they’d start the new billing cycle and I’m sure that a lot of us will see some relief in the electricity bills.”

The Electricity Company of Ghana and the utilities regulator – Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) have been at loggerheads following the latters’ order to the ECG to suspend a billing software which was churning out outrageous bills to consumers.

The ECG on the other had said it would not be able to suspend the implementation of the software since it would make it difficult to track consumption of power.

President Mahama further said “I’ve explained that the bills went so high because the waters in our hydro dams are low and hydro is the cheapest source of power. Now all the power we are produce is either with gas or with crude oil and these are more expensive that hydro."

“But we are praying that this year the rains would be good so that the dams would recover. As we put in cheaper hydro power we will adjust the tariff to reflect the cheaper power we are getting."

“So I would ask Ghanaians to exercise patience, government is sensitive to what is going on and we’d do our best to give them some relief” the president added.