Some residents of Lorlornyo, a suburb of Kpong in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, where the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is currently undertaking an exercise to replace all post-paid meters with smart new prepaid meters have indicated that the exercise by the ECG is progressing because of the military presence.
According to the residents who are alleging that the ECG is forcing the prepaid meters on them, they are comporting themselves because of the military personnel accompanying the engineers from the ECG to undertake the installation exercise.
The ECG on Tuesday began a mass installation of prepaid meters in the Lower Manya Krobo enclave with the support of 50 armed military personnel drawn from the 49 Field Engineers Regiment and 1st Infantry Battalion, whom the ECG said are providing engineering support.
Fatawu Dawda a resident of Lorlornyo who spoke to Citi News about the ongoing prepaid installation, said the exercise has been smooth for ECG because of the military involvement.
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“We are all not happy with these people who are in our town. In this town, a lot of people are jobless with no work and things are slow, everybody is suffering financially. We are also buying airtime on our phones daily with these hardships, so we are all concerned about the hardship. So the thought of the current hardship in the country is what compelled us to stage the demonstration for the first time from Somanya to Kpong. It was so intense that day and all the TV stations carried the news item. We heard the issue was still in court, so we don’t understand why the ECG is here today with the military to install prepaid meters”.
He added that, “We have only allowed them to do the installation because of the presence of the military. If only workers of ECG came here today to fix the meters like there will be confusion, chaos, and misunderstanding. The people here will not allow them to fix the prepaid meters including myself because where my meter is, if I am not at home, nobody can change it because the day they came to fix the post-paid meter it was done in my room and I have a porch so now unless they break into my room before they can change it to prepaid, and I won’t even allow them”.
Another resident who also explained why red bands were tied to the post-paid meters insisted that they do not like the prepaid meters.
“The red bands on the meters of residents here means danger. If in case the person is not home it means you can not touch his meter. So if something happens to you after you touch it, you can not blame him. I don’t want the prepaid meter too because I can’t buy phone credit and at the same time buy ECG credit”.
