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The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) last Saturday started a national exercise to clamp down on persons and institutions that had connected power illegally. The exercise, which is being done in collaboration with the security agencies, will involve visits to all customers of the company to ascertain the nature of their electricity connection and the state of electricity meters. The exercise started with the disconnection of power to a newly constructed three-storey building around the Mensah Woode area at East Legon in Accra, with apartments for renting which had installed 10 high-capacity air-conditioners and connected power illegally. The owner of the building was not available at the time. The Managing Director of ECG, Mr Robert Dwamena, who took part in the exercise, said it was amazing the quantum of power that such a building was consuming illegally at the expense of the company�s revenue targets. Prosecution He said the owner of the building would be surcharged and thereafter prosecuted for theft. Mr Dwamena said the exercise had been occasioned by wanton theft of power on the part of some unscrupulous elements that undermined the revenue drive of the company. He said in spite of the existence of loss control outfits in the company, the theft of power was now becoming �overwhelmingly high.� �We want to visit every customer in the country to check the integrity of their meters,� he said. The decision to embark on the exercise, Mr Dwamena said, followed a pilot exercise carried out at Dodowa where it was realised that out of the total of 591 customers of the company, 110 of them had connected power illegally. Official information from the company indicates that it has a customer base of about 2.5 million nationwide, however, the actual number exceeded that figure by far due to illegal connections.