The Energy Minister Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has assured Ghanaians that they are not in ‘Dumsor’.
Speaking to the media while on his visit to GRIDCO he called on Ghanaians to remain calm Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) works to address the intermittent power outage in the country. He refuted claims that the energy sector is financially burdened hence the recent power outages.
Since the beginning of 2021, parts of the country have been frequently plunged into erratic power supple popularly called ‘Dumsor’ without prior notice. But the minister explained that a system upgrade is responsible for the intermittent power outages.
“As far as we can see, the project is an ongoing project and so it is not about finances, it’s just like when you are renovating your house, sometimes it’s more complicated and expensive than even building a new house,” he said.
Dr Opoku Prempeh noted that this “is not a generation problem, this is not about fuel, so how could it be ‘dumsor’? Dumsor is planned and the timetable is rolled out and it affected the whole country for four years. Is that what we are seeing? No”.
He said after the works, the power sector will be stronger than ever. “This our lines that we have just been informed have been there from 1950, some from 1965. The power it was supposed to transmit, Accra has expanded tremendously so they are given us power or lines that can improve the power situation in Accra. What we are implementing is the best for them ( Ghanaians )” he emphasized.
The Director of Engineering with GRIDCo in a conflicting comment stating that the system upgrade will resolve the current power crisis.
“The line when completed will increase the transfer capacity between Volta substation in Tema here and Accra, it will increase it from about 400 megawatts to about 1,900 megawatts. For a period of maybe one or two weeks, there will be an outage. So we will sit down with ECG to make sure that the impact will be as minimum as possible”.
Meanwhile, Ghanaians have named the recent power outages as ‘Dumsor Pro max’, with what occurred on Sunday night where the lights kept flickering between 11pm and 12am.
Filed By : Agaatorne Douglas Asaah / awakenewsroom.com
