ECG cautions customers against fraudsters …using unapproved MoMo numbers

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Mr Ofori (second from right), addressing the media

Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has warned the public against fraudsters, who operate in the name of the company, requesting customers to make payments through illegal mobile money transfer (MoMo) numbers.

“No ECG payment is done to a specific number. If someone calls and ask you to pay to a phone number, that person is a fraudster, don’t pay to a name or number,” the Western Regional ECG General Manager, Mr Emmanuel Ofori, has alerted.

He was addressing a news conference in Takoradi yesterday, to officially launch “No Free Consumption” exercise, in Western Region yesterday.

As part of the exercise, the ECG teams would go to the field to update customers on important practices, including important ECG phone numbers, GPS addressesand collectionof any arrears, Mr Ofori said.

He said the team would also educate the public on issues concerning disconnectionof customers for non-payment of arrears and pick pictorial readings of all postpaid meters with new meter reading electronic device (Zeus mobile device).

The team, Mr Ofori explained, would also capture, regularise all Self- Help Electrification Programme (SHEP) and non-ECG meters on the Zeus mobile device for customers to pay regularisation fee.

He said “you will only be asked to pay when weprompt you through text messages. This comes after you have gone through the process. May be you have done the registration, they’ve come to inspect your premises for the new services, then you will receive this message indicating that they have carried out the exercise.”

Mr Ofori indicated that “now, you can go ahead and do the payment whereby an invoice will be generated for you. It is that invoice that you can use to do the payment. You don’t do a payment without an invoice. So when somebody call you that do a payment to a specific number, please, let us know before you do that payment because people are taking advantage of our digitalisation to defraud customers.”

Mr Ofori said that the operation was to help ECG improve upon its services, and also retrieve debts, stressing “our main objective is to ensure that customers who have been consuming power free are identified and then billed.”

He said ECG would also promote the use of its mobile app, as it goes cashless especially with customers requesting for new services

FROM CLEMENT ADZEI BOYE, TAKORADI