The minority in parliament is attributing the current power cuts in the country to a “lack of fuel in the system to fire thermal plants,” citing financial constraints as the root cause. They are urging the government to provide transparent information to Ghanaians regarding the actual problem.
According to the NDC, on February 28, 2024, the country experienced a power deficit of 530 megawatts, leading to disruptions in power supply to neighboring Ivory Coast, Togo, and Burkina Faso.
At a press conference held on Thursday, February 29, 2024, at Parliament House, John Jinapor, the Ranking Member on the Mines and Energy Committee, revealed that some thermal plants, including TACO and TICO, are currently offline, exacerbating the power shortage.
”The minority side has been monitoring the power situation for the past one month, and it appears based on the information available to us, the power sector is collapsing.
Since 2nd February, we are talking about one month now , there is been persistent and consistent load shedding by the generation companies. Indeed, the load shedding is getting worse by the day, The day the president was delivering SONA and boasting, there was some load shedding happening”, Mr John Jinapor stated.
Jinapor emphasized that the minority has been closely monitoring the power situation for the past month, observing persistent and worsening load shedding by generation companies since February 2nd.
He stressed the need for the government to inform Ghanaians about the challenge to allow for adequate planning, highlighting that load shedding would resume at noon due to fuel shortages.
“Today at 12 pm, load shedding will commence again; our investigation indicates that some of our thermal plants are down, and there is a lack of fuel causing the load shedding. The handlers of the power sector should do the honourable thing by informing the people of Ghana so they can plan ahead of time.”
The minority MP for Yapei-Kusawgu constituency urged the government to urgently secure funds to procure fuel for the generators.
In a related development, Deputy Energy Minister-designate Collins Adomako-Mensah assured Ghanaians that the recent power cuts, known as ‘dumsor,’ would be resolved within the next two weeks.
Adomako-Mensah acknowledged the recent outages but expressed confidence in addressing the issue promptly, reassuring the public of imminent solutions.“I admit that for the past two or three weeks, there have been some power outages, but it is interesting that the two-week power outages are causing the Minority to have a press conference. I am yet to fully settle into the [Energy] Ministry, but the little interaction I have had with the officers in the Ministry before my vetting is that this should be taken care of in the next two weeks,” Collins Adomako-Mensah said in the interview.
By Eugene Davis
