Vice President and presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has stated that efforts by the government to digitalize revenue collection were hindered by the staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
Speaking at the Annual AGM of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Africa, Dr. Bawumia disclosed that some personnel within the IT unit of ECG deliberately introduced ransomware to disrupt the functionality of the system.
“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 digitalisation.
“Can you believe that workers within the system sabotaged it? 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.”
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“And we found the computer through which the ransomware was injected in the system. It took us a while 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.
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“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,” he stated.
