Why electricity consumer credits disappear from their meters – explains PDS

General News of Thursday, July 11, 2019

Source: Graphic.com.gh

2019-07-11

The utility, Power Distribution Services (PDS), has attributed the recent demise of consumer meter electricity credit in parts of Accra to a system failure.

According to Mr. William Boateng, public relations officer for the PDS, the affected areas are in the western region of Accra, including Kaneshie, Dansoman, Achimota and Korle Bu.

He explained that the system 's failure resulted from the recent Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) rate adjustment and that the meters were not responding correctly to the time and date adjustments. system installation. the server.

After badyzing the problem, he said the best solution was to change the whole system.

Some consumers complained that when they added credit, it was not reflected on their meters, others claimed that their credits disappeared.

There are those who have exhausted their credits but who are still able to use electricity without the system cutting them, and those whose systems debit them while they are supposed to have credit on counters.

For example, in a radio program on Citi FM in Accra on Thursday, a customer stated that he had an electricity credit of 3,000 GH ¢ on his meter and had left to operate until At Ghc1000. was negative of 4000 ¢ GH.

Explaining the reasons for the difficulties faced by Citi FM in Accra on Thursday morning, Mr. Boateng explained that this was due to the difficulties encountered with their servers with regard to the recording of the time and date and that some counters were not responding correctly.

"My brother, it will be refunded, I talked to the manager, we have the MasterCard and can easily identify those who have lost credit and the refund will be made, I can badure you."

He added that 300,000 total counters are concerned and that "there is no need to go into the technical details explaining why the meter does not respond accurately, but this may have a report with the time and date installed in the counter ".

"We decided to take the bull by the horn and replace the whole meters … we are talking about about 300,000 people in these four districts [Kaneshie, Dansoman, Achimota and Korle Bu].

"We can not replace them immediately, because of the numbers, so they've decided in the region that as customers arrive, they have a challenge and they come to buy, and then [engineers] will replace the counter. "

Boateng urged customers to stay calm because the company was working hard to resolve the issues surrounding the disappearance of prepaid credits and said all lost credits would be repaid.

"Allow me to apologize to our customers, we are on the ground, we are increasing the number of technicians and we are using third parties to help us start this project.

Surprisingly, however, some Danfa and Madina customers also complained about the demise of their prepaid meter credit.

Mr. Boateng also said that although the company has its own challenges, it will work very hard to solve the problem, insisting that the problem does not concern the whole country and that it is not necessary. It was therefore not necessary to create panic.