Management of the New Kejetia Market located in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region is indebted to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to the tune of GHS2.1million
These arrears are for a six-month duration, according to the ECG.
The General Manager of the Public Affairs Directorate of the ECG, Erasmus Kyere Baidu made the revelations in an interview with Alfred Ocansey on 3FM’s Sunrise on Thursday.
“The market owes us GHS2.1m for a period of six months”, he explained.
Business activities have been halted as management of one of Ghana’s biggest trading centres, the new Kejetia Market in Kumasi, has truncated electricity supply to over 8,000 shops on Wednesday.
This is as result of unresolved disagreements between the traders and the management over the payment of electricity bills.
Prior to this, Management of the market reportedly locked up hundreds of shops in the market following the refusal of the traders to pay their electricity bills and other service charges.
Reacting to the issue, Mr. Baidu explained that “being alive without electricity is uncomfortable but we [ECG] deal with the company and not individuals”.
“We have declared the last quarter of the year as ‘operation collect and correct’ our bills so it is not only the Kejetia Market that we have targeted”.
He explained that “yesterday we were at Obuasi, Abuwakwa, and other places. It’s a whole exercise and we are not relenting. The target is to make sure we collect all our bills and Kejetia is just one of them”.
Asked whether the individual traders can apply for their individual metre, Mr. Baidu explained that because the market is being managed by a company, individuals have no right to bye-pass the company and apply for their personal metres.
“Management can come to the ECG for a new arrangement for a new individual metres but they are yet to come. The traders cannot bypass their management to come directly to us for an individual metres”.
The Manager said currently, “we have given them temporary electricity and given them up to the end of the week to resolve the issue and get back to us”.
