Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has disclosed that the Electricity Company of Ghana has increased its annual revenue from 450 million cedis to 1.2 million, after the power distribution company went digital.
Additionally, the passport office also witnessed a significant change in its revenue mobilization from one million cedis to sixty-five(65)million cedis, indicating that the digitization process by the government has reduced corruption.
Dr. Bawumia, who was speaking at the National Development Conference under the theme “Moral vision and national development,” indicated that Ghana’s digitization drive has reduced corruption drastically.
This, he said, was as a result of the digitization agenda introduced into their system.
Dr. Bawumia noted that the Electricity Company of Ghana over a period of four years recorded a constant revenue monthly, which was not correlating with the rise in customers.
The power distribution company was making four hundred and fifty million Ghana cedis monthly, but after the digitization drive, the revenue has gone up to over 1.2 million cedis which is an indication of how the digitization drive has reduced corruption and increase its monthly revenue.
Same was replicated at the Passport Office, which was initially making 1 million cedis monthly but moved to 65 million cedis.
“In times past, it used to be easy to lie about your age and get away with it, particularly in the government sector. At the port, for instance, we have introduced the paperless system, and this came with resistance, but eventually, it went through. Some of the custom officers organized demonstrations against the move, but we were firm on our stance. Today, at the offices of the Electricity Company of Ghana, you can buy your credit without any challenges. But, the challenges with ECG initially were that the revenues of ECG were constant, and the values were the same. We looked at the architecture of revenue of ECG, and we changed it. They were collecting four hundred and fifty million cedis a month as revenue.We sent in a team to work on their system. There were sabotage like people sending viruses into the system to destroy our work, but we were resilient and brought in a whole new architecture for ECG. Today, they make over a million Ghana cedis as revenues monthly. The same happened at the Passport Office, which was making a million cedis to over sixty-five(65) million cedis “Vice President Dr. Bawumia said.
The two former presidents, John Agyekum Kufuor and John Dramani Mahama, also at the event highlighted the importance of the conference and the need to hold our values as African.
Former President John Dramani Mahama expressed concerns over the issues of traditional values and the adoptions of alien cultures from other countries that have taken over our Ghanaian space.
The former president charged Ghanaians to go back to the basics where some key Ghanaian values were upheld in our societies.
“As Ghanaians, we have thrown away our values. Today, our cities are so dirty.When we were children and growing up, we used to wake up early in the morning and swept our compound, but today it is not the case. Today, society is not concerned about how we make money and the manner in which we make them. Grieve and thieft have taken over our space and people who are engaged in that are celebrated, yet society is not concerned, “John Dramani Mahama said.
Former President John Agyekum Kufuor, on the other hand, raised issues of morality in our Ghanaian society. The Former Pesident charged that morality must be treated with the needed importance in the Ghanaian space adding that development can be justified in terms of its service regardless of the tribe, religion, idealogy, gender and wealth.
” In the grips of technological advancement around the world, mankind seems to be losing the sense of itself and sadly of its creator the almighty God. Thus the word morals which must equate with humanity is taken for granted and a forum such as this must refocus our society and infuse and integrate morality in our search for proper development” Former President John Agyekum Kufuor said.
Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo, whiles addressing the gathering, indicated that there is the need for justice to prevail in all facets of Ghanaian life to ensure a peaceful coexistence among all manner of persons irrespective of their standings.