ECG courts public support to stop cable theft

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has appealed to the public to help stop the stealing of its cables in communities.

The management of ECG in Tema said the illegal practice had negative implications not just for the company but also for customers.

The appeal comes on the back of a discovery by the Tema office of ECG that some cables at an installation around the Tema Smelter Two Bulk Supply Point had been cut by unidentified persons.

The Bulk Supply Point serves areas and industries within the Kpone environs.

The areas and industries served by this Bulk Supply Point includes B5 Plus, Mass Industries, Mavis Industries, Blow-Chem, entire Kpone Township, Community 25, Ghana Steel, Affordable Housing and Adi Steel among others.

Outages 

The General Manager of ECG, Tema Region, Emmanuel Akinie, said engineers of the company discovered the cut cable last Tuesday as part of investigations into an outage which occurred at dawn of the same day.

He explained that the affected cable was part of a set of new ones which had been laid few days prior as replacement of some old and worn out cables.

According to Mr Akinie, they replaced the cables because electricity supply to customers in the affected places had been experiencing some challenges for some time now.

“As it is now, the cable has been decommissioned as work has to be done on it before it can be energised again,” the ECG General Manager said
Mr Akinie indicated that the load of customers who did not have supply because of the cut had been transferred to other networks, while efforts were underway to fix the damaged cables.

Cost implications

The ECG Regional Manager appealed to the public to help protect ECG property and equipment as damages to them, such as the cable cuts, ended up affecting customers who would not have supply.

Such nefarious incidents also cost the company money as resources meant for other projects had to be diverted for such repair and replacement works
Mr Akinie further cautioned that such attempts were dangerous as the perpetrators could easily lose their lives through electrocution.

“When cables are laid, you may not know whether there is electricity in them or not. In this case, while the person was cutting it, there was an explosion which then caused the outage and the person also bolted, leaving behind a hacksaw,” he added.