The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is intensifying its preventive maintenance programmes to reduce power outages for its feeders, especially during the yuletide. Managing Director William Hutton-Mensah admitted that load shedding exercises and other bottlenecks in distribution network have caused inconveniences to consumers over the course of this year. During the Election 2012 period, the ECG, together with the Volta River Authority (VRA) and GRIDCo, adopted measures to ensure adequate power supply. Ing. Hutton-Mensah hopes to see the success of these strategies extended through the Christmas and New Year period, stating that a special team will be on standby to rectify problems that arise this festive season. “I cannot say so much on behalf of VRA but for us [at the ECG], from now to the Xmas and to the New Year we have put those teams on standby and we want to assure the public that, as we showed during the electioneering period, we’ll continue to ensure that when these faults occur, we’ll have teams to quickly respond to them and rectify them,” he told Luv Fm in Kumasi. Ing. Hutton-Mensah reiterated the ECG’s focus on four thematic areas to ensure profitability and improve customer service delivery, namely improvements to supply reliability and quality, improvements to revenue collection, improvements to customer service, and a reduction in system loses. The ECG boss noted that the level of losses stood at 27.2% as at end of 2011 but reduced to 21.3% byt September 2012 by the ECG’s thorough enumeration of streetlight installations in the country and its an improved, scientific loss reduction programme. He added that cable theft also results in financial loss to the company, depriving the ECG of money that could be invested in installing additional sub-stations, expanding facilities and upgrading network lines to increase voltage and service to clients. While emphasizing the company’s quest to improve services, Ing. Hutton-Mensah urged customers to promptly pay bills and report incidents of theft and meter tampering.