The Tema South District of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has engaged community opinion leaders under its jurisdiction and called on them to support the power distribution company to protect its assets.

The call was made by the District Manager, Horace Nkansah, who mentioned that some of the company's substations had been turned into refuse dump, a situation which he says impacts negatively on work and power supply.

The meeting was held at the District's office on Tuesday, February 4.

Mr Nkansah also indicated that there is an alarming incidence of fuse theft, a situation which affects the power supply and keeps affected customers without electricity for a while.

The community leaders expressed their concerns, most of which were about stable power supply and low voltage situations.

On these, they were informed that though some outages are from the company, some are also through faults and problems caused by unscrupulous people.

"If, for instance, there is a fuse theft and a transformer goes off, such an outage will not be from the company", said Nkansah.

He added that "in situations where work has to be done at a substation, but upon reaching there, there are piles of refuse all over, it becomes difficult to attend to the problem immediately as the rubbish has to be cleared first."

Horace Nkansah also bemoaned situations where some people break the padlocks to these substations and use the inner perimeter as their storage facility.

This situation, he said, is very alarming and can cause fatalities. He pleaded with the community leaders to help inform the community members to take their security seriously and to refrain from such acts.

The community leaders were generally appreciative of the district's response to their challenges.

There is a WhatsApp platform made up of the community leaders and officials of the ECG Tema South District.

This platform provides an essential way for information flow between the stakeholders. This enables them to immediately inform.ECG of various challenges going on in the communities.