Flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has lauded his efforts at increasing revenue collection for the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) after digitising their system.
He says the digitisation drive increased the power distribution company’s revenue collection to a billion cedis from GHC450 million monthly.
Although his efforts, he says, were initially sabotaged by some staff at the ECG, the anomaly was later rectified by the National Security who helped restore the system and got the culprits arrested.
Speaking at the 14th Commonwealth Regional Conference for Heads of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Africa, the Vice President urged members to emulate Ghana’s efforts which saw over 100 per cent rise in revenue for the ECG after going digital due to the blockage of corruption avenues after the introduction of the system.
“Can you believe that workers within the system sabotaged it, they put ransomware into the whole system. And the system essentially collapsed. We had to send in national security to eventually find that it was some of the staff at the IT department who were culpable.
He stressed, “we found the computer in which the ransomware was injected into the system. It took us a while to restore the system. They asked for a ransom actually for this to work. Can you imagine? That we should pay, they submitted a bill that we should pay for the system to work. Anyway, they were arrested.
“And we restored the system, and we digitized the system, and we said that no more cash payments for electricity in Ghana. You only pay with your mobile money or electronic bank transfers. So that is now the case. Can you believe that from GHC450 million a month, the collection has now gone to over a billion cedis a month?” he asked.
