The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) Wednesday launched the second phase of its Database Management System (DBMS).
The project, on the theme “Effective Utility Sector Regulation through improved technology in Ghana” is being funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) through the Korea-African Cooperation Trust Fund (KOAFEC).
It is aimed at providing a secure, multi-tier management system for all regulatory data with “role-based access and front-end capability” for processing, reporting and managing the Commission and the regulated utilities.
Speaking at the event held in Accra, Executive Director of the PURC, Dr Ishmael Ackah, said this phase of the project would make it easier for the PURC to link its system to that of the utility providers.
Explaining, he mentioned that the first phase of the project enabled the Commission to perform most of its regulatory functions, such as complaint management effectively.
However, he stated that the PURC intended to further improve data collection and analysis with the second phase of the DBMS project.
This when done, he said would provide details of customer complaints made to utilities and give information of when the customer got response for the complaint lodged.
“With this system when a customer goes to a utility to make a complain, we get the alert with details of the customer. It will also give us messages about how swift the Utility provider responded. This way we will get live and credible data not data based on what the utility will send us,” he added.
He explained that this would help the PURC take regulatory decisions easily “and also show us that we have credible sources of data.”
Mr Ackah also reiterated his outfit’s commitment to promoting energy conservation in the country.
The Ghana Country Manager of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Ms Fasika Eyerusalem, in her remarks commended the PURC for pioneering the regulatory digitisation initiative that has become a blueprint for replication across many African countries.
She stated the AfDB had over the years been at the forefront of mainstreaming electricity regulatory issues within the broader power discourse in Africa, adding that PURC’s digitisation initiative was born out of the bank’s flagship Electricity Regulatory Index for Africa (ERI) report, which empirically assesses regulatory frameworks for African countries, identify regulatory gaps and bottlenecks, and make recommendations to address them.
The initiative she said underscored the bank’s efforts to support regional member countries to improve the quality and effectiveness of energy regulation using customised solutions to address identified regulatory bottlenecks and create an enabling environment to attract private investment into the energy sector.
She revealed that the deployment of the DBMS for the PURC under phase one was a major contributory factor to the improved regulatory performance observed for Ghana on the Electricity Regulatory Index, moving from seventh ranked country in 2021 to fourth in 2022.
Ms Eyerusalem assured of AfDB’s continued support for soft infrastructure initiatives similar to the DBMS, to complement the hard infrastructure in the energy sector such as power plants and transmission lines towards the attainment of the universal access to electricity in Africa
BY RAISSA SAMBOU
