Acting Managing Director of NEDCo, John Okine Yamoah (center)
Correspondence from Northern Region
The Acting Managing Director of the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo), John Okine Yamoah, has stated that five out of every 10 houses in the northern area (Northern Region) are likely to be involved in power theft.
He said most of the power thefts were found in the Tamale Metropolis and Yendi Municipality.
According to Okine Yamoah, NEDCo loses 45 percent of the power it distributes every month in the Northern Region, with about 70 to 80 percent of the losses attributed to illegal connections.
“Not all of our 45% power distribution loss is as a result of power theft, but the majority of it is power theft. I can guess that about 70 to 80% of our losses [in the Northern Region]… If we select 10 houses, there’s a likelihood that 5 or 6 of them will be involved in power thefts,” the acting managing director told journalists in Tamale on Tuesday.
He said that by the end of 2024, NEDCo lost 45.9 percent of the power it distributed, lamenting that “no businessman can sustain his business with these kinds of losses.”
Yamoah stressed that the percentage was outrageous when compared to other operational areas where they lose at most 29 percent.
“In the northern area now, we are losing about 45 percent of the power we send out every month, and that’s a big challenge for us. In all the areas that we operate in: Sunyani, Techiman, Bolga, and Wa, the losses we have in these areas are within a certain limit.
“Apart from Upper East that has gone up to 29 (percent) last year as a result of the fight in Bawku, for which reason we’re unable to go there and monitor our meters and do all the checks we need to do, which has resulted in our losses going up in these areas, Sunyani, Techiman and Upper West are all operating within 20, 21 percent loss.
“Our regulators; PURC in giving us the tariff they give us, they make room for distribution loss of 21.4 percent, so if we operate within 20, 21 thereabout, it means we’re within the benchmark given to us by our regulators,” he explained.
The Northern Electricity Distribution Company has always raised concerns over the rate of illegal power connections in the Northern Region, which it says makes them lose millions of dollars.
The newly appointed acting managing director said as part of plans to find a permanent solution to the challenge, the company is adopting strategies, including setting up zonal Loss Control Units in the Tamale Metropolis and embarking on night operations to clamp down on illegal connections.
He hinted that “Now, we have only one loss control team that takes care of all the zones, and it is difficult for them to achieve the results that we want.
“So going forward, we are coming up with a plan to get a loss control team for each [of the 11] zones, and what they will do is that that is their area of operation, so every morning, they will be in the zone, and it even comes to a time we’ll come at night, we will get there. So that when we are present in the network, whatever goes wrong, we are able to see it.”
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