ECG staff used ransomware to sabotage paperless system – Bawumia

May 9, 2024 Vaseline stjohnson 0

Vice President and flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has revealed that officials of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) sabotaged government efforts to digitize revenue collection.

The Akufo-Addo government has been driving the digitalization agenda with the vice president at the helm.

During the Annual General Meeting of Anti-Corruption Agencies in Africa, Dr Bawumia claimed that some staff in ECG’s IT unit introduced ransomware to prevent the system from functioning properly.

According to him, the ransomware crashed the system, adding that national security intervention was necessary to uncover the personnel behind the sabotage.

“They just kept it at GHC450 million every month. So I said we have to send a team to digitize the new collection of the Ghana Electricity Company, so we sent a team and started the digitization process.

“Can you believe that the workers inside the system sabotaged, put ransomware throughout the system? And the system essentially collapsed. We had to send in homeland security and eventually found out that some IT department staff were the culprits.”

“And we found the computer where the ransomware was injected into the system. It took us a while to restore the system. They asked for a ransom to allow this to work. You can imagine? That we must pay, they presented a bill that we must pay for the system to work.

“Anyway, they were arrested. And we restored the system and digitized it and said no more cash payments for electricity in Ghana. You only pay with your mobile money, electronic bank transfers. So that is now the case. Can you believe that from 450 million shillings a month the collections have gone to more than 1 billion cedis a month?

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