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Information Gathered by Daily Heritage indicates that some residents in and around Amasaman in the Ga West Municipality of the Greater Accra Region have, for the past eight years, not paid electricity bills.

Although they enjoy the nation's scarce electricity in this era of power rationing (dumsor), the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has failed to bill them for periods ranging from two to eight years.

This is because, according to sources at ECG, the meters of the affected consumers have not been “captured” in the company's billing system. Some residents said their efforts to get ECG officials to rectify the situation have proved futile.

According to some of the residents, who expressed anger at the situation, any time they demanded bills from ECG, they were given the excuse that their meter numbers had not been “captured” in the company's data.

The situation has made some landlords and residents of Fise, parts of Pokuase and surrounding communities in the municipality anxious as they fear they would be slapped with huge bills, when their meters are finally “captured” in ECG's data system.

In a telephone interview with the District Manager of ECG, Nsawam branch who also controls Amasaman, Mr. Solomon Tfawe, he said he was not aware of the situation and asked the affected people to report all their issues to his office.

Mr. Tfawe said, “The first issue is to establish the source of such meters because most of them were not installed by the ECG and thus cannot be traced in the system except when the affected consumers come to the office with their receipts for us to verify their authenticity”.

“We wouldn't know until they come to the office and report to us because some of the meters were not from ECG. There are a lot of illegal ones that people sell around, which do not meet the company's requirements,” he stated.

He added that ECG does not delay in billing residents because immediately they are connected to the national grid, the billing process starts and therefore he expressed surprise at the current situation.

A Mapping Officer at the ECG Avenor branch, Mr. Philip Martey who supervised the mapping of the Fise area claimed that, “The issues have been resolved because some landlords complained to me some months ago and we have solved their problems.”

Mr. Martey, however, added that, “Since some others claim to be having issues with theirs, we will come around to check them”. He failed, however, to give the day and time for that exercise.