The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) is calling on the management of Power Distribution Service (PDS) to as a matter urgency ensure that all power consumers in the Eastern Region are captured on their systems and issued with regular bills.
According to the PURC, 86 non-billing customers were identified during a short monitoring and public education exercise it conducted as part of their mid-year review, a situation PURC described as unfortunate.
In an interview with Citi News, the Eastern Regional Manager of PURC, Jude Aduamoah-Addo said electricity consumers over the years have never received bills saying such a situation is affecting revenue mobilization.
“We undertook so many activities in the region with respect to monitoring, public education, sensitisation and complaint management trying to bring the desk right to the door steps of the people. And some serious observations we noticed was that, a number of people in the region are using electricity for years without receiving bills and others too had made it a point not to pay bills but the most serious once were the non-billing customers.”
“This mid-year alone we have captured 86 non-billing customers so revenues which need to be collected are not being collected”.
“The figures this year compared to last year which was around 172. PDS should go to the grounds and rectify this as soon as possible. There were instances where people had their metres under their beds, others too we had to intervene so we feel there is so much money in the system that hasn’t been collected and there is a need to embark on general revenue collection to make the processes very easy and simple. We know PDS is going round trying to mobilize revenue but there are people using electricity and they have never been captured on the system to be issued with bills”.
Mr Jude Aduamoah-Addo then urged PDS to come up with flexible payment options for non-billing customers when they are finally identified.
“We will encourage PDS to come out with reasonable flexible payment options for those customers who will be identified and captured for the first time. We do not want situations where there will be misunderstandings as to how the payments are to be made, so we encourage them to be flexible enough with plans to encourage customers to pay”.