An electricity bill should explain what a customer owes. When thousands of cedis appear under the word “adjustment”, without a clear account of how the amount was calculated, that bill becomes a demand for trust the supplier has done little to earn.
That is the anger running through complaints about the Electricity Company of Ghana’s postpaid billing. One customer reports a GH¢9,000 adjustment. Another says an adjustment increased a bill from GH¢90 to GH¢1,189. Others ask what happens to people who have already paid amounts subsequently found to be excessive.
There are also complaints of customers trooping daily to ECG’s Kumasi Substation offices, its Hohoe office and offices in parts of Accra, seeking explanations for disputed bills. They describe encounters with tellers and other frontline staff whose responses they consider dismissive, unreasonable and unhelpful.
These accounts require investigation, including examination of the underlying bills and ECG’s responses. They do not, by themselves, establish deliberate theft. But they raise questions that cannot be answered by sending frustrated consumers from one counter to another.
A person who takes time off work, spends money on transport and joins a queue to challenge a bill deserves a patient hearing and an intelligible explanation. Where a teller cannot resolve the matter, there should be a clear route to someone who can. The customer should leave with a complaint reference, a responsible officer and a timeframe for a response.
Poor customer service adds humiliation to financial distress. An employee may not have created a billing error, but treating the person affected with contempt compounds the institution’s failure. Courtesy, competence and accountability are basic requirements of public service.
For a household budgeting carefully for food, rent and school fees, a large unexplained adjustment is a financial shock. Calling it a technical correction does not make the money easier to find.
The problem has a documented history. In November 2023, ECG acknowledged that a new process had caused difficulties with estimated bills. Its “fix the bill, pay the bill” exercise involved taking and verifying actual meter readings to produce accurate bills. Billing failures therefore cannot simply be dismissed as customers misunderstanding their consumption.
An adjustment can be legitimate. If earlier bills underestimated actual consumption, a subsequent reading may reveal a shortfall. Paying every bill received does not necessarily mean every unit consumed has been fully charged.
But ECG must demonstrate that shortfall. The word “adjustment” proves nothing by itself.
A proper explanation should identify the period being corrected, the relevant meter readings, the units previously billed, the applicable tariffs and all payments already received. It should show how the revised balance was reached. A customer should be able to follow the calculation without needing an acquaintance inside the company.
Where data migration or a system change is offered as an explanation, ECG should provide the records connecting the old balance to the new one. People designed the system, entered its data and authorised its use. People must answer for its mistakes.
That responsibility extends to the boardroom.
ECG’s board and its management, headed by Ing. Julius Kwame Kpekpena, must explain what safeguards protect customers from incorrect adjustments and how those safeguards are monitored.
What is the value of assembling experienced professionals around a boardroom table if an ordinary customer still cannot obtain a clear explanation of a debt? When the board considers revenue collection, does it demand evidence that the amounts being pursued are accurate? Does it examine how disputed bills are handled, how customers are treated and how quickly errors are corrected?
These are questions of judgment and conscience as much as administration. Any discussion of recovering thousands of cedis from a struggling household should include a simple question: can we demonstrate, clearly and fairly, that this money is owed?
A responsible board should require that answer before endorsing collection procedures. It should insist that management bring the experience at the customer-service counter into its assessment of corporate performance. Revenue figures alone cannot tell the full story of an institution entrusted with an essential service.
Ghana’s consumer-service regulations already recognise the need for safeguards. Regulation 33 of L.I. 2413 requires a utility recovering an undercharge to inform the consumer and offer an instalment payment option. Regulation 32 requires disputed bills to be reviewed and reconciled, while consumers remain responsible for the undisputed portion.
These protections should be visible in everyday dealings with ECG. The threat of losing electricity must never become a substitute for explaining a bill.
The question of money already collected is equally urgent. A customer who borrowed to settle an inflated bill has lost access to money needed elsewhere. An apology cannot replenish the family budget.
Regulation 34 requires utilities to correct overcharges promptly, credit the consumer’s account with the full excess amount and notify the consumer. It also provides for interest, at a rate determined by PURC, where overcharging continues for three months or more.
Once ECG identifies a common billing error, it should proactively review every affected account. Corrections should reach customers who paid quietly, struggled with the complaints process or never realised something was wrong.
PURC should require a public accounting of the accounts examined, incorrect charges identified, amounts reversed, credits issued and complaints still unresolved. Independent checks should establish whether failures arose from faulty readings, software, poor supervision or deliberate misconduct. Where wrongdoing is established, responsibility must reach those who caused or permitted it.
Some consumers describe their experience as “professional” robbery. That language conveys the helplessness of being asked to surrender money to an institution whose calculations they cannot inspect. ECG should take that distrust seriously.
Every cedi demanded must be accounted for. Every customer questioning a bill deserves respect. Every established overcharge must be corrected.
The board and management should make those standards the test of their leadership. A household’s poverty must never become the reason its questions go unanswered.