Installation of pre-paid meters in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) will now begin next month, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has said. The Director of Customer Services of the ECG, Dr N. K. Smart-Yeboah, said a substantial number of meters would have been installed by the end of this year. Early this year, the Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, directed the ECG to fix pre-paid meters at all the MDAs. The measure, he said, was to curtail the abuse of electricity consumption at the MDAs, while the government took the necessary action to clear its huge indebtedness to the ECG. He said the government's indebtedness to the ECG, which had piled up over the years, stood at GH¢80 million and stressed the need to collectively monitor how power was consumed. Dr Smart-Yeboah said apart from the MDAs, pre-paid meters would also be installed at the residences of officers working in the MDAs. He said because the exercise was "a delicate one" proper planning had been done so that occupiers of the residences and the MDAs were not unduly inconvenienced. He stated that the installation of the pre-paid meters in the MDAs would make civil servants more attuned to conservation methods, and expressed the belief that the Ministry of Finance would ensure that they stayed within budget limits as far as electricity consumption was concerned. Dr Smart-Yeboah explained that the delay was due to the procurement process that the company had to go through and added that by the end of this month, the new meters would begin arriving in Ghana. He said already, some MDAs in certain parts of the country had pre-paid meters installed on their premises and maintained that some teachers bungalows in Cape Coast also had pre-paid meters. Dr Smart-Yeboah said the installation of the meters would result in more revenue for the ECG as the company's cash flow would improve. "The installation of the meters is a debt management strategy that would result in the rise of revenue for the ECG," he added. Meanwhile, the MDAs have initiated moves to factor the purchase of pre-paid meters into their various budgets to be submitted to the Ministry of Finance. Ms Evelyn Baafi, acting Estate Officer of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, told the Daily Graphic that since the MDAs would purchase pre-paid cards themselves, they were putting figures together to determine how much in scratch cards they would have to procure when the meters were installed. Source: Daily Graphic