<\/p>\n
\n
The Eastern Regional Security Council says it has deployed military personnel to the Yilo Krobo District to carry out an intelligence-led assessment ahead of the next phase of installation of pre-paid meters by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).<\/p>\n
According to the Minister, Seth Acheampong, the security personnel will ensure the safety of ECG officers who will be deployed to fix the meters.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur best option to have an amicable settlement. We have to allow the engineering regimens, who are task-survey and have the potential to be able to equally protect property and also to protect lives, so we have peace and overall public safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe military regimens are on their way and so they are doing their recce on all the lines to be sure that no lines are broken. So the main lines are all well,\u201d he told JoyNews<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Somanya and Odumase have been in darkness since July 27, after the ECG switched off feeders supplying electricity to the two municipalities over illegal connections.<\/p>\n Speaking in an interview with JoyNews<\/strong>, the Chief Executive of ECG, Samuel Mahama, noted that some residents tampered with their transformers and reconnected power to their homes after they were disconnected for refusing to accept prepaid meters.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen soldiers and my technicians went out there to check on it, a mob attacked them. They pelted stones and other objects at them,\u201d he narrated.<\/p>\n According to Mr Mahama, the staff\u00a0of the ECG were forced to retreat as a result of the violent attacks from the natives.<\/p>\n In order to prevent the stealing of electricity, Mr Mahama said his outfit decided to cut the two communities off the grid.<\/p>\n \u201cIf somebody is tampering with it, you can\u2019t give the other person a stable power supply. If we don\u2019t have access to the grid, how can we work?\u201d he quizzed.<\/p>\n Earlier, Mr Mahama had explained the reason behind deploying the military for the installation of pre-paid meters at Yilo and Manya Krobo municipalities.<\/p>\n In an interview on Hard Truth<\/strong> on Tuesday, Mr Mahama said that the soldiers were needed to protect his staff and that they were not there to instill fear in the residents.<\/p>\n According to him, ECG does not have the requisite number of staff for the operation, hence, decided to involve the soldiers who are also engineers<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t have the requisite numbers. They are not just soldiers, the Army has an engineering regiment that has electrical engineers, I picked them up and took them to the training school, with the blessing of the National Security, and then, deployed them there to do the exercise,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Mr. Mahama also said the ECG needed the army on the ground because \u201cwe have not had the best of relationships in Manya\/Yilo Krobo, so my staff needed support from the National Security.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Eastern Regional Security Council says it has deployed military personnel to the Yilo Krobo District to carry out an intelligence-led assessment ahead of the next phase of installation of pre-paid meters by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). According to the Minister, Seth Acheampong, the security personnel will ensure the safety of ECG officers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1172882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[260,10660,10884,8941,22905,7350,13126,18960],"class_list":["post-1172880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-ahead","tag-deployed","tag-installation","tag-krobo","tag-meter","tag-military","tag-prepaid","tag-yilo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}