Ghana Electricity Company Visits Eskom

Pretoria — Officials from Ghana's electricity company have paid a study visit to Eskom.

In a statement on Monday, Eskom said officials from the Ashanti Strategic Business Unit (SBU) from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) were in South Africa last week to study international best practices in the electricity distribution and customer service businesses.

"The visit was on the back of [the] Inter-Governmental Memorandum of Understanding (IGMOU) on cooperation in the field of electricity that South Africa and Ghana entered into on the 26th of November 2013.

"This IGMOU provides for collaboration between the State electricity companies, as well as approval and support for the creation of partnerships in the various areas of the electricity industry between electricity companies from both countries," said Eskom Group Executive for Transmission, Thava Govender.

Following the signing of the IGMOU, Eskom and the ECG entered into an Inter-Utility MOU in order to facilitate and promote cooperation in the field of electricity distribution and all related businesses.

Last week's study tour was aimed at improving the performance of the Ashanti SBU of the ECG.

"The study tour aimed to learn, benchmark and understand the importance of Eskom's organisational strategy, business planning and sustainable systems and further to understand how the Performance Management System is implemented at Eskom," said Govender.

The study tour also focused on Eskom's process management and quality assurance system, shared services concept and the customer network centre business model.

The General Manager for Business Development at ECG, Theophilus Asante-Darko, said the utility has identified Eskom as their training hub.

"We created the SBU in order to improve the performance of our company. The study tour also focused on Eskom's process management and quality assurance system as the creation of the SBU led to redefining most of the operational and business processes, which need to be documented, managed, reviewed and audited periodically.

"We also studied Eskom's shared services concept and the customer network centre business model. Much value was found in engaging with Eskom and we continue to learn from each other," he said.

The delegation also toured the Eskom's customer network centre (CNC) in Soweto as well as the Shared Services HUB at Lobedu House in Sunninghill, Johannesburg.

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