'Rising Against Stupidity' Charges On ECG

Some youth of La-Wireless, an area within the La Community in Accra, yesterday stormed the offices of Daily Guide to register their frustration at the hands of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). The group, Rising Against Stupidity (RAS), said they had decided to take this measure because it seemed the service providers were taking them for a ride. According to RAS, they had experienced constant power outages in areas such as Birthday, Wireless, Anansekrom, Burkina, Nataso, Luu Furniture and Apaapa for many years but the situation seemed to have worsened at the latter part of 2010. Gabriel Adenyoh, a member of the group, told Daily Guide that they had the worst Christmas celebration ever this year. Meat and other food items bought for the celebration ended up in the rubbish dump simply because the constant power outages destroyed their freezers and other electrical appliances. “Master, the worse of it is that whenever you call their help line, (0203611611) a machine picks up the call and puts you on hold, wasting your credit for close to five minutes before you are attended to, and when an operator answers the call, the only thing they tell you is ‘we are sorry for the inconvenience’,” Gabriel fumed. Another member of the group, who gave his name as Sylvanus, noted that they never got reasons for the outages from the call receivers because it seemed they knew little about the situation on the ground. He claimed the constant power outages were hampering his advertising business and other works in the area. According to him, residents spent the whole yuletide in darkness, adding that on 31st night when one needed light to ‘walk’ into the New Year, the ECG decided to plunge them into darkness. “Even if it is an overload on the transformer, can’t it be solved? Do we need expatriates to point it out to us before something is done about it,” the group queried. The group used the opportunity to call on the MP for La Dadekotopon and Deputy Minister of Agric, Nii Amasa Namoale to use his noble office to address the problem. “We will be very much grateful if the MP can act on this request for us so that we can work and live in peace in his tenure of office,” the group concluded.