Managers of the popular hotel, Hillburi, located at Aburi in the Eastern Region have been arrested for allegedly stealing electricity.
According to officials of the ECG, the hotel has enjoyed electricity illegally for years until ECG engineers uncovered the unauthorised connection during a search on the premises of the hotel in the course of the week.
The perpetrators are expected to be arraigned before court on April 1.
The External Communications Officer of the ECG, Madam Laila Abubakar bemoaned the high level and huge scale of power theft that had been identified.
According to her, the results of their investigation indicated that the hotel had a motive and was on a quest to steal power.
“The one that affects me the most is just how much power is being stolen. We’ve been lenient for too long, I think that it’s time that we look at these issues, separate from all the other things that we go through, and start prosecuting people seriously.
Update on the ongoing nationwide revenue mobilization exercise, which started on March 20 and will end on April 20, 2023.
— Electricity Company of Ghana Ltd (@ECGghOfficial) March 31, 2023
Help ECG serve you better pic.twitter.com/NvuAP5rcV6
The major power distributor is on a massive nationwide disconnection spree primarily targeting state institutions and private businesses owing a cumulative amount of GHC5.7 billion.
The revenue mobilisation crew of ECG said it discovered that the hotel had done a bypass underground from their dedicated transformer to supply power to their gadgets.
“So they don’t pay as expected,” an official of ECG said in a video posted on the official Twitter page on Friday (31 March).
“In fact, they pay when they want to pay,” the official added in the one minute video. “It’s a serious situation… we’ll take them through prosecution. This one is a straight forward case and we’ll take them through prosecution.”
“This is pure illegal connection. We’ve disconnected them, as we speak now they are not on our network,” the official added.