The ECG – the “Electrically Corrupt Gangsters”, I mean, the Electricity Company of Ghana, has again drummed from the highest peaks in this land to convince the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to hike up our electricity tariffs by a whopping 78 per cent, on the grounds that the current supply of electricity to consumers is costly and threatens the very survival of the ECG and the country’s electrical power sector. In short, the current practice is unsustainable. Sustainability is always a powerful argument, especially in a world of multiple challenges, from disappearing forests, global warming to relatively scarce resources. However, in the context of the ECG’s management of power supply to consumers and its own resources, the sustainability argument is as bankrupt as it is untenable. In my view, the ECG is simply a gangster operation of corrupt disconnection thugs and field task force officers, whose under-carriage is a patchwork of tyrannical, unskilled, conniving and thieving private electricians whose underworld matches the seediest ones known to mankind in the twenty-first century.
To understand my rather harsh characterization of the ECG requires an examination of the supply of electricity to consumers from a three-tiered illegal operational structure. Like most formal entities, the ECG is hierarchical in structure, but in this case the corrupt operations take a reverse hierarchy that is mind-boggling and scary. First from the bottom are the crooked private electricians who have surreptitiously woven themselves into ECG’s formal structure. The ECG has probably changed metres twice or three times in the last decade. The reason they claimed was to introduce a number of efficiencies, including efficient energy consumption and collection of tariffs. They blamed every problem of power supply on illegal consumption practices and illegal connections and tariff avoidance. I agree. Every consumer of electricity must be properly connected and must pay their bills – private citizens, government officials, businesses and public institutions. Everyone. We must all pay our bills. Period! The ECG insisted that while this was the solution, the ECG did not have the required level of manpower to undertake the changing of the metres nationwide.
Enter the private electricians, who were recruited to augment the work of the ECG re-metering taskforce. Over time however, these private electricians have embedded themselves within the ECG operational structure and have now become the central hub of the corrupt practices that victimize us all. These private electricians have a number of characteristics which are completely unprofessional, corrupt and arrogant. First, they have a swagger to their walk that will make the most accomplished fashionista’s catwalk look like a drunken waddle. They have been able to deeply embed themselves within the construction industry, forming formidable alliances with building contractors and landlords, who engage their services to bring electrical power to their construction projects and properties. Collectively, they constitute the First Tier of the tyrannical ECG underworld. That is where the whole corrupt scheme is hatched – from acquiring the poles, getting the cables, drawing the power to the premises, and acquiring meters and re-charge cards. The entire process is laden with so much illegal activity it is criminal, for which in my view, someone or some people must go to jail.
When the ECG hatched the idea to engage these private electricians as part of the specific operation of meter replacement, they promised to aggressively vet their qualifications and skill level to ensure that they not only had the right skills and attitudes for the work, but that they also met the so-called high standards required for all ECG electricians. This is important, given the danger and frequency of electrically-related fire hazards. On the contrary, they did none of that. The result is a an engorgement of the ECG substructure with a large number of unskilled, ill-mannered and corrupt electricians who now hold consumers hostage at every turn of electrical power supply. First, when it comes to connecting electricity to a building, the private electrician deliberately connects the electricity wrongly, not to cause a fire but to give the appearance of poor or illegal work. Because there is no way of validating the work according to established work practices and standards, and there is no ECG oversight while the work is on-going, a private electrician disappears right after he claims to have finished his work for which he is paid. The building contractor who engages him has little to no incentive to follow-up and hold such an electrician accountable. Many of these initial connections are incomplete, without the necessary metering or credit-reloading components to allow a tenant or consumer to purchase their own electricity, or downright illegal. So, by default, most connections are illegal or faulty right from the start.
As time passes and the buildings get occupied, new tenants are either convinced by landlords that the building has already been properly fitted with electricity or that the proper configuration is in process and will be completed soon. Many tenants and businesses this writer spoke to recounted similar experiences, many of whom grew increasingly uncomfortable about not paying for the use of any electricity within the first months or few years of their occupancy. In fact, some of them confessed that having enjoyed the “free” electricity for some time, they had no incentive to do the right thing by getting the landlord to effect the proper connections, the costs of which would be immediately passed on to the occupant by the landlord. Meanwhile, from the standpoint of the private electrician, his scheme is working to perfection. This is what I call TLT or the “time lapse trap”. Depending on an arbitrary determination by the same private electrician who first wired the building, but a determination certainly contrived purely for private monetary gain, the private electrician quietly points out the building with improper electrical connections to an ECG field task force, who form the Second Tier of the tyrannical ECG underworld.
These ECG field gangsters are notorious for their uncompromising enthusiasm for disconnections, perhaps the right attitude, but with a bent designed to put money in their pockets, not the Government’s coffers. Already in cahoots with these crooked electricians as part of the scheme, it is this connection that begins to give legitimacy to the entire operation. One day, suddenly, - presumably an unlucky day for the occupant of the building – an ECG task force shows up at the door, demanding to inspect your electrical connection, as indeed by law they are empowered to do. The occupant allows them in and they are certain to find one of two faults with your connection – illegal connection or poor quality work, already guaranteed by the initial work done by the crooked private electricians on the First Tier. They proceed to ask the occupant about the duration of their residence, almost in an interrogative manner. Then Boom! They hit the occupant with 3 to 5 years arrears of unpaid electricity use, issue you with a chit which must then be presented at an ECG substation for resolution. The prospect of paying such a whopping bill, approximately an average of Three Thousand Ghana Cedis (GH¢3000) so suddenly, forces the occupant instantly into a weak position of negotiation. On the face of it, the ECG task force is simply, innocently doing their job and any explanations by the occupant ostensibly make no sense to them. In reality however, it is one well-oiled and connected illegal operation, designed to extort money from consumers into gangster pockets. The money never reaches the Government.
Within five minutes of leaving the premises, the power to the building is shut off, further increasing the anxiety of the occupant, which in turn makes the occupant more amenable to extortion by way of lower fees instead of the 5 years of fees in arrears potentially to be paid to the Government. Then from nowhere resurfaces either the private electrician who did the initial work or a new electrician, asking the occupant about the electrical situation and indicating he knows the ECG task force and can “talk to them”. True to his word, the “new electrician” calls the occupant a few days later and proposes a fee, lower than the arrears indicated on the chit, but still high enough to make these gangsters a killing. Eventually, money exchanges hands between the occupant and the private electrician who as go-between shares the spoils of the operation with the ECG task force, and coordinates restoration of power to the building. Even then the occupant’s woes aren’t over. This private electrician makes repeated attempts to extort additional monies from the occupant, including “pole climbing fee, weekend work fee, card recharge and clearing fee”, etc. etc. In fact, he basically throws a bucket of dubious fees and so long as the occupant hasn’t got the backbone to say “enough!”, this guy is going to keep coming up with fees relentlessly.
How is this possible one might ask? How is it that a tradesman, who by any stretch of the imagination is not an official of a formal state entity providing electricity is able to instill so much fear in citizens of our beloved country? How is it that such daylight robbery goes on in a government entity which is supported by taxpayers and no one is held accountable? The answer is simple – all these things happen with the tacit acquiescence of various staff of ECG at various levels of Management, and they, constitute the Third Tier of the Electrically Corrupt Gangsters of the tyrannical ECG underworld. One victim of such ECG wickedness in fact took the chit to the ECG substation to which he was directed and was surprised to find that no one appeared to know the signatory of the chit. Further investigations revealed that it is another part of the scheme designed to shield this corrupt practice from investigative reporters. In fact, scores of receptionists, secretaries, clerks and mid-level staff at ECG form part of this corrupt protective shield that is constantly victimizing consumers, and it partly explains the high illegal fees charged by reconnection ECG field officers and private electricians: all these people in this corrupt chain get paid. Even scarier still, the money never reaches the Government. If you think One Thousand Ghana Cedis (GH¢1000) is “small money”, do the math. Assuming One Million new connections and reconnections are done nationwide every 2 months under this corrupt scheme, and that victims pay on average GH¢1000. Drip, drip, drip, that comes to One Billion Ghana Cedis (GH¢1,000,000,000.00); Six Billion Cedis a year, stolen from Government coffers by a coalition of ECG gangsters and crooked private electricians.
This is the story of ECG, the company that has asked for a huge increase in tariffs because it says without the increase its operations cannot be efficient, when in fact through those very same operations, it is already stealing large sums from our very noses, in addition to the huge salaries they earn. In fact Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr. of the Insight Newspaper reports that some line managers at ECG earn more than the President of the Republic of Ghana.
This is scary, not just for our collective security but for the sustainable and efficient use of public resources. In fact, many citizens do not even know that these private electricians are just that – private electricians. Many think they are ECG officials because of their swagger and level of confidence, and the brazenness with which they carry out these illegal acts on citizens and consumers repeatedly. And they do it without any hint of fear – fear of the law, fear of being reported or simply fear. My view is that they need to be afraid – they need to be very, very afraid; they need to be afraid of breaking the law. They need to be afraid of victimizing consumers; they need to be afraid of continuing to engage in this scheme. They need to be afraid of causing financial loss to the state, and for them to be afraid someone or some people must go to jail and do hard time for a very long time.
Ironically, many in the public seem to accept the practice as normal. What else can one expect from a perpetual victim? Take a close look at any government institution and you are more likely to find one or more corrupt schemes in operation, eerily similar to the ECG gangster operation. The Ghana Education Service (GES) and Senior Secondary School Headmasters, the NationalAccreditation Board and private universities are immediate examples. With the GES, the specter of SHS admissions will soon put them in the spotlight again. This disease is institutional – hello?
In fact some highly placed Government officials, who are quick to flaunt their government-affiliated credentials, believe this to be normal too, and view consumer protestations of these victimizations as cacophonous. If our Government officials think this way, then perhaps all is lost, and probably explains why these electricians and ECG task force gangsters are not afraid. They know no matter what happens, they will never be held accountable, perhaps because they pay upwards. Is it not appropriate therefore to ask whether all the extortion that goes on not only pays just ECG officials, but goes way beyond the ECG? It appears to be an institutional culture that runs far deeper and higher than just the private electricians on the one hand and ECG gangsters on the other. So is it pointless to say the Government, any Government, must do more to fight corruption? Because at least, someone needs to go jail, and very soon too, for this tyrannical, vindictive, abusive and illegal scheme unfolding under the very noses of law enforcement and ECG officials and Government, must stop.
Francis Dery
Accra, Ghana
deryfrancis@yahoo.com
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