Ghana’s Minister for Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh is urging players in the power sector to desist from peddling untruths about the current intermittent power supply being experienced in the country.
The West African nation has been experiencing intermittent power supply since the beginning of 2021.
The country’s power transmitter, Ghana Grid Company, has blamed the situation on technical challenges and ongoing upgrading of their transmission lines.
Despite series of explanations offered by the power transmitter and the power distribution company, ECG, sections of the public and some industry players have rather blamed the situation on lack of funds for the power players to ensure efficiency in the their operations.
Speaking at the CSOs’ and media engagement with GRIDCo and ECG on the current electricity situation in the country, organised by the Institute for Energy Policies and Research, in collaboration with African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), the Energy Minister expressed worry about how some power generators are feeding the public with wrong information about the current situation.
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He reiterated that the current intermittent power supply being experienced is not an indication of the return to the era of load shedding, but rather challenges in the transmission system.
“What we’re currently going through is not a generation deficit neither is it ‘dumsor’ as we experienced in the past,” he stated.
“It is rather unfortunate that our generators, who obviously have no problem with what has happened, are feeding the public with statements that are probably untruths….It’s not just right for a sector player to go on air and say that we’re in the current state because the government is not giving funds.”
Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh expressed the view that this important stakeholder meeting would provide the opportunity and platform for the power subsector players to explain in details the reasons for the interruptions in the power supply system within the last few weeks.
“It is our expectation that such clarification will be extended to the larger populace,” he said.
Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh charged ECG and GRIDCo to communicate their planned outages timeously to enable consumers to plan ahead.
Source: www.energynewsafrica.com