Thieves Vandalise Street Lights

Story:Michael Donkor & Jasmine Afari-Mintah
THIEVES have vandalised the newly installed street lights on the recently constructed Tetteh-Quarshie interchange in Accra resulting in the complete breakdown of the entire lighting circuit.
They have stolen long spans of power cables and cubicle components on the poles during power outages.
The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana, Mr Jude Adu-Amankwah who confirmed this in an interview with the Daily Graphic said the contractors working on the project, Technolights Limited had written to inform the ECG about the theft.
He said although the lights had not been officially handed over to them the theft was not a welcome news.
He said this was not the first time that thieves had vandalised street lights.
He said most of the street lights which had not been functional had been due to the activities of thieves who had always been tampering with the cables connected to the poles of street lights.
On the issue of some traffic lights which had not been functioning since the loadshedding exercise was halted, Mr Adu-Amankwah said the ECG had supplied uninterrupted power to its consumers and that the problem might be with the bulbs or other electrical problems but not with power.
He said if there was no power supply to these traffic lights mostly in Accra, the ECG should be officially notified by the authorities in charge of the maintenance of the lights.
He said so far the ECG had not received such complaints.
On the issue of power outages to the stations of the Ghana Water Company which had resulted in the erratic power supply, Mr Adu-Amankwah said they were expected to have a standby generator for any sensitive equipment to ensure that they were not affected by power outages.
He said the Ghana Water Company was not an exception and that they were to have standby generators to supply water.
He, therefore appealed to them to stop passing the buck that their inability to supply uninterrupted water to some areas were due to power outages.
Mr Adu-Amankwah expressed concern about how people fixed bulbs on electric poles in the name of connecting a street light, but then the lights only reflect in their homes.
He said such practices was not helping the nation and advised people to let those lights be connected to their metres since it served their personal needs.