Consumers in Metropolitan areas are entitled to compensation if power outages exceed 48 hours a year, the Executive Secretary of the Energy Commission Dr. Ofosu Ahinkorah has revealed. According to him, consumers should have a maximum of six outages in a year, totalling forty eight hours. “If it exceeds a total of forty-eight hours in a year, then the consumer is entitled to compensation, provided the outage was not caused as a result of planned interruption for maintenance or a major fault like a whole system going down or transformer exploding,” he revealed on Tarzan’s Take last Sunday on Multi TV. His revelation comes as a surprise, especially in a country where power outages have become the rule and not the exception. Dr. Ofosu Ahinkorah said consumers are entitled to make complaints with the PURC when the ECG fails to live up to its responsibility. He explained that the ECG, by law, is expected to attend to applications and requests made by consumers within five days and that for every week that ECG fails to connect after payment; the consumer is entitled to compensation. Quoting the electricity supply rules of service, which is LI 1816, passed in December 2005, he specified the procedure for acquisition, connection, the obligation of the supplier to supply, metering, billing, disconnection and all the parameters of electricity supply . He admitted that many consumers are faced with delays in supply of services related to electricity but the law requires that within five days of requesting for a service, the utility service has to conduct a survey to determine what it will cost the consumer for the service. After paying a connection charge, ECG is supposed to provide services within five days. Failure to do so, gives the consumer the option to make complaints to the PURC, he added. He said the ECG also has a duty to inform consumers at least three days ahead of any planned interruption and if it is an accident, the consumer has to be notified immediately after the event that efforts are being made to restore the supply, Dr Ahinkorah stressed.