The Chief Executive Officer of the Consumer Protection Agency, Kofi Kapito, says the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) should have done more to timeously address the issue their technical problem had caused.

According to him, taking into consideration the long queues at vending centres, the Management of ECG should have directed their vendors to work round the clock selling electricity credit to waiting buyers.

This comes after some ECG prepaid consumers were left in the dark after a technical challenge affected the purchase of credits for their meters.

Customers in Volta Region, Takoradi, Tema, Cape Coast, Kasoa, Winneba, Swedru, Koforidua, Nkawkaw and Tafo were affected.

On October 1, ECG said they had fixed the vending challenges, however, some consumers in certain affected areas were still reporting challenges on Sunday morning while others were still unable to buy due to the very long queues at the vending centres.

Commenting on the situation on JoyNews’ PM Express, Kofi Kapito said the failure of the ECG to provide their services round the clock after the challenge was fixed was akin to holding Ghanaians at ransom.

“It’s been 24, 48, 72, now it’s been six days. Publications were sent out that the problem has been solved. My biggest problem is, … I don’t understand why ECG workers in this time, why the people who are vending should not be made to work 24 hours round the clock to get the issue solved.

“In any other jurisdiction, this is where workers will be told that we need to sacrifice; we need to get this thing working so that our customers will not be complaining,” he said.

He added that it was rather unfortunate that in the on-going discussions surrounding what may have gone wrong with ECG’s credit purchasing systems, the plight of consumers have not been given priority.

“Do you know today is the beginning of the Customer Week worldwide? And in Ghana the customer somehow is not even in the picture. People have queued hours, days…

“The question is the consumer needs information. The consumer wants to know the way forward. This thing has happened, compensation? Maybe we can talk about it in due course but ECG should tell us or PURC to put consumers at a comfort zone that ‘we hear your cry, we understand what you’re going through, but remember we are here for you. So we will make sure that whatever compensation which is due any consumer, if it is due you we will work on it’.”

The General Manager of ECG has since apologised to Ghanaians for the mishap.

“We are very sorry and apologise to our customers, we do understand what they’ve gone through, we as a company we are not happy about the situation, we are very sorry and we are working very hard to make sure that we will not experience this again.”