Twenty-one people, including seven women have been arrested in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi for illegal electricity connection.

The alleged power thieves were picked up in a swoop conducted by the Electricity Company of Ghana at the Danyame and Suame districts of the region.

These 21 consumers are part of those whose power had been disconnected over the failure to pay their electricity bills.

However instead of repaying the debt they owe the ECG, they decided to reconnect power to their properties without the company’s knowledge.

The ECG says the huge debt owed it by its numerous consumers has accounted for the company’s inability to operate adequately.

It has begun a disconnection exercise across the country which is aimed at retrieving all these monies. Both public and private institutions as well as individual consumers are not being spared in the exercise.

Area manager of the ECG in the district Harrison Musah Yakubu lamented over the company’s failure to deliver on its mandate as a distribution company.

He said the company will no longer spare consumers who have refused to pay their bills, yet use power.

“Our monthly sales should have decreased but you see that still what we are selling is always increasing. So we then realized that customers are self reconnecting and are not making efforts to pay.

“It is for this reason that we decided to carry out this exercise and it has proven us right that indeed when you disconnect customers they don’t come to pay the debts they owe, they find electricians to reconnect them”, he added.

Electricity consumers in Danyame from 2014 until now owe the ECG about 18 million cedis.

Mr Musah Yakubu says 180 defaulting customers will be disconnected a day. This includes 30 consumers who are considered by the ECG as high debt customers.

The defaulters will be made to pay their debts in addition to penalty and reconnection fees or face prosecution.