ECG disconnects West Africa’s biggest steel manufacturing company over GH¢19m debt

B5 Plus Limited, manufacturer, and trader of iron and steel, touted as one of the biggest in the West Africa sub-region has been disconnected from the national grid for failing to pay a balance of GH¢19.5 million to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

The company had an outstanding debt of about GH¢42 million but managed to settle more than half, but that was not satisfactory for ECG, which is chasing all customers to recoup over GH¢5.7 billion owed it.

According to the national task force of ECG, they were assured that the balance owed to the company would be settled this week.

However the steel company defaulted on its promise and when the task force arrived at the headquarters of the company in Tema, they were prevented from accessing the substation and so the disconnection was done from the source, and the feeders were taken away.

Citi News sources indicated that managers of B5 Plus have threatened to connect directly to GRIDCo despite not having permission from the Ministry of Energy to do so.

“Any attempt by the company to connect directly to GRIDCo without settling its bills to ECG and getting the right authorization will have dire legal repercussions on their business,” the external communications manager of ECG, Laila Abubakari, stated.

The power distributor says it’s racing against time to settle power producers’ huge sums of arrears due to debt owed by ECG customers.

So far, numerous companies have been disconnected from the national grid, while many others have redeemed their indebtedness to avoid disconnection.

The disconnection exercise is part of a nationwide activity led by the managing director of the Electricity Company of Ghana, Samuel Dubik Mahama.

All ECG offices have been shut to allow all managers and other staff to embark on the one-month revenue mobilization, which is expected to end on April 20.

 

 

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