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The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has levied a hefty fine of Five Million, Eight Hundred and Sixty-Eight Thousand Ghana Cedis (GHS 5,868,000.00) on former members of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) board who served between January 1 and March 18, 2024.
This action was taken due to their failure to comply with Regulation 39 of L.I. 2413, which mandates prior notification to consumers before any power interruption.
Among those affected by the fine are Keli Gadzekpo, who resigned as Board Chair on March 26, and the current ECG Managing Director, Samuel Dubik Mahama.
PURC had directed ECG in a March 18 letter to issue a load-shedding timetable by April 2, 2024, which was not adhered to without explanation.
The Commission’s letter on Monday, April 15, revealed that ECG carried out 4142 outages within its operational areas between January and March 2024. Out of these, only 165 were planned outages by ECG, with only 40 supported by public notices.
Furthermore, 38 of the 40 notices did not comply with the requisite three-day statutory notice prescribed under Regulation 39 of L.I. 2413.
As a result, PURC is imposing a penalty of 3,000 penalty units on ECG for each breach of the timetable directive, totaling the aforementioned fine.
However, due to ECG’s ownership structure, the fine will be imposed on the board members instead. They have until May 30, 2024, to pay the fine into a dedicated fuel account under the joint control of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance.
