Someone Has Introduced A Virus Into ECG’s Payment System – NPP Presidential Hopeful Alleges

Presidential hopeful, Kojo Nsafoah Poku, has alleged that the recent challenges with the payment system of the Electricity Company of Ghana are resultant of a deliberate cyber-attack by some person (s).

According to him, some people intentionally introduced a virus into the system of the ECG to hide some crimes they committed.

He added that the IT staff at the ECG cannot be involved in the current challenges, as is being asserted, because they do not want any third party to be brought on board because of their inability to perform.

“The ICT staff are against the hiring of a third party to help with the payment system of the ECG and so they will never do something that will lead to that. Now that their payment system is down, people will be saying that the 3rd party has to be brought on board and that is not what the ECG staff want.

“There is someone at the ECG who is refusing to give data or equipment for the issue to be resolved and EOCO has now gone to take them by force. The person is the one with a motive. Now, there is a subject of criminality because the person might be trying to hide some bad things she/he has done including the possibility of shortchanging the company in terms of revenues acquired through the payment system.

“The truth is that the person has introduced a virus into the system of the ECG and that is why Ghanaians now have to struggle in order to purchase electricity,” he said in Twi in an XYZ TV as quoted by Ghanaweb.com.

He urged Ghanaians to be patient because the security apparatus of the country including the National Cyber Security Centre, and the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), have taken up the matter and will get to the bottom of it.

Since Tuesday, 27 September 2022, ECG customers across the country have struggled to purchase prepaid credits for their prepaid metres.

The ECG announced that it was experiencing challenges with the purchase of electricity by customers on the E-cash and PNS metering systems.

In a public announcement, the ECG noted that the interruption is due to “a technical challenge.”

The power distribution company, however, assured customers in the affected areas that its “engineers are working assiduously to correct the anomaly and restore the system to normalcy.”

Some Ghanaians including a System Analyst and Cyber Security Consultant, Yayra Koku, have alleged that the current challenge with the Electricity Company of Ghana’s prepaid vending system is a deliberate ploy to make way for the procurement of a new payment platform from a private company called Hubtel.

In a post shared on Twitter on Monday, October 3, 2022, Yayra Koku said that there is nothing wrong with the current payment system of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) but some people want to change it because of a 4 percent commission they stand to get.