PURC Fines ECG Board ₵5.8M For Dumsor without Notice

The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has slapped the Board of Directors of the Electricity Company Limited with a fine of nearly six million cedis for administering planned outages without appropriate notice to customers.

According to Regulation 39 (4) of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (Consumer Service) Regulations, 2020 (L.I. 2413), a public notice about a planned interruption of power supply must be issued to customers for a period of not less than three working days before the interruption.

A probe by the Commission found that 4,142 outages were administered within the ECG’s operational areas between January and March 2024 out of which 165 were planned.

Of that figure, it found that only 40 were accompanied by public notices while 38 of the notices did not comply with the requisite three-day statutory notice.

In a letter to the ECG, the Commission declared, “For failure to comply with the 3-day statutory notice required under Regulation 39 of L.I. 2413, the Commission in accordance with Regulation 45 of L.I. 2413, hereby imposes a regulatory charge of 3,000 penalty units on ECG for each of the 163 breaches, amounting to Five Million, Eight Hundred and Sixty-Eight Thousand Ghana Cedis (GHS 5,868,000.00).”

The Board of Directors of the company who served between August 1, 2023, and March 18, 2024, would pay the fine since they were responsible for providing strategic direction to ensure the provision of safe, adequate, efficient, reasonable and non-discriminatory service to consumers.

Source: Opemsuo