Residents and business owners in the Yilo and Lower Manya Krobo Municipalities of the Eastern Region are bracing themselves up for uncertain days ahead in the face of what appears to be an indefinite power shutdown in the area.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has for the second time in seven months shut down its operations in the Krobo area after months of hostilities occasioned by the deployment of prepaid meters to the area.
The area has therefore been without power since 10:30pm on Wednesday, 27th July, 2022.
The current outage has been necessitated by what the company describes as tampering with its properties by unscrupulous people which has affected its network system.
Prior to the total shutdown, some parts of Lower Manya Krobo including Agomanya Ablotsi, Agormanor, Agbom, Yohe, Yokuenor, Abansey, Saisi, Nuaso Old Town and parts of Kpongunor, had since Wednesday, July 20, been without power.
That outage, according to the power distributors, was caused by saboteurs who cut ECG fiber cables and tampered with its service lines.
Days later, the Company said its efforts to fix the problem were being thwarted by threats on the lives of its personnel who responded to the situation.
As part of efforts to address that problem, Konor of the Manya Krobo Traditional Area, Nene Sakite II on Tuesday invited personnel of the Electricity Company of Ghana to his Palace where he encouraged them to return to work to repair all faulty transformers which had plunged some parts of the Municipal into darkness.
Frustrated residents in the suburbs of Kpongunor and Nuaso who could not endure the prolonged outage, allegedly restored supply by tampering with the service lines.
Frustrated customers of the ECG accused the power company of deliberately putting off the power to punish its customers in the face of the brouhaha over the ongoing prepaid metering exercise.
Though the Company is encountering resistance in some communities over the installation of the meters, the exercise has been successfully undertaken in Kpong and many areas in Somanya.
Things however came to a head on the evening of Wednesday, July 27, when residents of Nuaso confronted a team of ECG and military personnel who reportedly went to work on a transformer in the area.
The transformer in question, it was gathered was one of the damaged equipment that resulted in the disruption in power supply to the area and is said to have been fixed by residents.
The presence of the team, therefore, heightened suspicions that they were there to cut the power again. This infuriated residents of the area who massed up in anger and confronted them with the ECG and the military withdrawing in the process.
At Nuaso and nearby Kpongunor, the residents burnt tyres around transformers and on roads leading to the facilities deep into the night.
Two hours after the clash, power was shut down in the entire Krobo area.
Many therefore believe the Company is being unfair to punish the entire area when they did not face resistance in other communities where it successfully carried out the exercise.
To safeguard the lives of its staff, the Company has temporarily suspended the prepaid metering exercise.
PRO of the ECG, Tema Region, Miss Sakyiwaa Mensah when contacted said the Company would respond to the current outage "in due time."
The ECG in December, 2021 similarly shut down its Bulk Supply Point (BSP) at Kpong for a week, denying power supply to the area over similar issues.
ECG says the power outage was caused by saboteurs who cut ECG fiber cables