Mr. Yahaya Fatawu, the acting area manager of the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCO) in the Upper East Region, has urged locals to assist his organization in their continuing revenue mobilization effort.
The exercise, which is the second phase, began on June 15 and is scheduled to wrap up by the month’s end.
However, if they are unable to reach their goal, it may be extended.
In an exclusive interview with GhanaWeb’s Sarah Dubure, Mr. Yahaya remarked that the activity was required because the majority of their clients owed the power distributor.
“The money that our post-paid consumers owe us in income is being collected in this collection. They consume, and we send them the bill at the end of the month,” he said.
They have two weeks to pay the bill after that, but frequently they put other requirements ahead of paying their electrical bills.
He said that after realizing the size of the debt consumers owed them, they decided it was necessary to pursue them for payment due to their lack of voluntary cooperation.
We have come to the conclusion that many of our customers owe us money, and he emphasized that if we don’t pursue them, they won’t voluntarily come and pay.
He urged clients to make it a habit of paying their bills on time rather than always waiting for them to show up.
The NEDCO representative said that the absence of payments sapped their resources and that they could have spent that time more effectively in their offices.
“We don’t want to have to use our limited resources to go after them to get the money; we want them to get in the habit of paying their bills.
“Since we are doing this, it feels as though we must quit our other employment, which is not ideal. To enable the power to flow, we should be fixing their issues, he stated, so they can take advantage of our services.
He mentioned that not meeting some of the clients at their homes whenever they visited was a significant problem they encountered during the exercise.
They now have specific arrangements in place for these clients to pay their invoices.
He also discussed the occurrence of illegal miners acting cunningly once they get a tip that they are coming.
He mentioned that in addition to the income mobilization exercise, surveillance would also be done.
He disclosed that they would be going from house to house and keeping an eye out for clients who had illicit ties.
We are not even aware of some of them because they use meters but are not on our billing system.
He continued, “So, in addition to raising money, we are keeping an eye out for consumers who are using unauthorized connections, and we are removing them and surcharging them.
Mr. Fatawu mentioned that during the initial stage of the exercise, there were roughly 300 offenders.
The business was able to recover 11 million cedis from clients during the first phase, which was last month.
They anticipate raising at least half or more of what was raised in the first phase by the end of the second phase.
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