Electrician Educated On Wiring

members of GHECA

Members of the Brong Ahafo Regional branch of Ghana Electrical Contractors Association (GHECA), have been advised to follow the guidelines in wiring houses to enable the region fight fires which are gaining grounds in the country.

According to the Technical Regulation Officer at the Energy Commission, Nii Ashun, for the first quarter of 2012, the country lost GH¢1.47million through 704 fires representing 90 percent of previous incidents.
He believed those fires were caused by electrical faults.
“From the way things are going, I know the country will record high fires in the first quarter of this year as compared to last year,” he added.
Mr Ashun was speaking at a day’s regulation seminar on electrical wiring and certification in Sunyani, where GHECA members from Sunyani, Techiman, Wenchi, Berekum and electrical students from Twene Amanfo Senior High Technical School were in attendance.
He said the Ghana Electrical Wiring Regulation was passed by Parliament into law on February 24, 2012, and the key objective of the law was to guide professionals who engaged in electrical wiring and installation works in the performance of their duties and to ensure safety of lives and property.
He noted that under the 2011, L.I 2008 indicated that a person should not undertake electrical wiring on premises unless that person was certified by a licensed electricity distribution utility or a recognized person appointed by the Energy Commission.
Welcoming the participants to the seminar, the Brong Ahafo Regional President of GHECA, Seth Kenneth Lartey Addo, disclosed that the seminar was one in a series of regional seminars being held as a strategy by the Ghana Energy Commission in collaboration with the Ghana Electrical Contractors Association, players and other agencies in the energy sector to address and discuss issues pertaining to their work which would seek to offer services to Ghanaians.
He said the seminar was particularly to educate, inform and sensitize various stakeholders and the general public on the provision of regulations, 2011, LI 2008.
Mr Addo said the seminar was timely and appropriate in the light of the many domestic, market and industrial fire outbreaks which had bedeviled the nation for the past couple of months, resulting in the loss of lives and destruction of properties.
The National President of GHECA, Joseph Walker, called on electricians who were not members of GHECA to join the association so they could benefit from the various training and enhance their skills in the work.
He also ordered the regional members of the GHECA to elect their executives within the next three months so as to make the association strong to look at the way forward for the association.
The Brong Ahafo Assistant Divisional Fire Officer, Mawuli Deh, also took his turn to advise residents to desist from overloading their sockets to avoid any fire outbreaks that the country had been experiencing.
 From Vivianna Mensah, Sunyani