The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has partly acknowledged that recent power outages are partly due to financial challenges.

Speaking at a forum organised by CSOs in the energy sector, ECG's Deputy Managing Director, Kwadwo Obeng, urged Ghanaians to pay their electricity bills to support ECG to maintain a stable power supply.

Mr Obeng noted that planned maintenance and insufficient gas supply to power the country’s thermal plants are also contributing to the intermittent power supply.

“I think PURC is here, they brought some mechanism for addressing some of the financial challenges, but it boils down to you and I to pay our bills. It is a chain where we buy the product to bring it, it is transmitted to us, we sell it, and the expectation is that we will collect the money.

This money then goes back through the chain to the IPPs and the gas suppliers. However, this system is not 100% efficient, so we face difficulties in collecting the money and paying it back to the providers. But we are improving,”he explained.

He added, “It may cause dumsor. Sitting in ECG, I know the challenge I face in getting money from my customer.”