You are paying so much for your electricity bills because there appears to be a collusion between the Government of Ghana, the Public Utility Regulatory Commission and the Ghana Standards Authority, the minority spokesperson on energy has said.

According to K.T. Hammond, his investigations into the issue have revealed that electricity consumers pay more lately because the number of revolutions that go into credit unit has reduced considerably.

“I have conducted my investigations. I think what has come out is that somehow the PURC has sanctioned a situation where the number of revolutions that go into credit unit, the number has been reduced considerably," he told Accra-based Citi FM.

“Those days my understanding is that, your meter would have to run 60/55 revolutions before you have one unit which you paid for.

“What is happening now is that it has been sanctioned by PURC, by the standards board that we no longer do that.

“The revolutions are now 45.”

“So when you have paid for 100 cedis and you bought 100 units of credit and you thought that you were going to have 60/55 revolutions to give you a unit, you now actually going to have only 45 revolutions,” he explained further. “So when the mercury dial is done 45 revolutions, it gives you a unit to pay for.

“This is scandalous,” he said.

According to him, this was rooted in the bills Ghanaians are paying.

Touching on the role of the standards authority, Mr. Hammond said when the meters are brought into the country, the board takes charge of the calibration of the meters.

“Now in the process of the calibration that these things happen,” he said.

According to him, the manufacturers of the meters have nothing to do with it. It is rather the purchaser who gives the specifications for the meter to be produced.

“And their [Government of Ghana] specifications was that we want 45 revolutions per unit. And that is want we are getting,” he said.

He called the situation a “rip off” and “scandalous.”

Customers who use the post-paid meters say they are being overcharged after the new tariff implementation.

Those who also use the pre-paid meters say their credit unit runs out easily.

In a press statement Tuesday, the PURC directed the Electricity Company of Ghana to suspend the implementation of the current billing software “until further notice.”

According to a statement from the PURC and copied to Pulse.com.gh, the directive has been "necessitated by Complaints which it has received from consumers of Electricity regarding issues of overbilling."

"The Commission after a thorough investigation into the matter through our Monitoring Exercise which culminated into visits to specific areas and also interrogation of bills which were presented to consumers by the Electricity Company of Ghana, came to the conclusion that there was an anomaly in the initial implementation of the new billing software," a statement signed by Nana Yaa Jantuah, director of Public Relations and External Affairs of PURC added