Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia claims that some Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) staff hindered the government’s efforts to digitise revenue collection.
This was revealed by the second gentleman of the nation during the African Anti-Corruption Agency’s Annual General Meeting.
He revealed that some IT professionals at ECG installed malware to prevent the system from functioning correctly.
He said that the ransomware brought the system down and that national security had to intervene to find out who was responsible for the disruption.
“They just kept it at GHC450 million every month. So, I said we need to send in a team to digitalise the new collection of the Electricity Company of Ghana, so we sent in a team, and we began the process of digitalise.
“Can you believe that workers within the system sabotaged, they put in ransomware into the whole system. And the system essentially collapsed. We had to send in national security to eventually find that it was some of the staff at the IT department who were culpable.”
“And we found the computer which the ransomware was injected in the system. It took us awhile to restore the system. They asked for a ransom to actually allow for this to work. Can you imagine? That we should pay, they submitted a bill that we should pay for the system to work.
“Anyway, they were arrested. And we restored the system and we digitised the system and we said that no more cash payments for electricity in Ghana. You only pay by your mobile money, electronic bank transfers. So that is now the case. Can you believe that from GHC450 million a month, collections have now gone to over a billion cedis a month.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana