Former Member of Parliament for Ayensuano, Mr Samuel Ayeh-Paye, has claimed that the country is not witnessing intermittent power outages, popularly known as dumsor. This is despite the incessant power outages that have rocked the country and slowed businesses in the past few months.
Currently, Ghana is experiencing a surge in power outages, raising a lot of serious concerns. The situation has piled pressure on companies in the power, especially ECG, with incessant calls for a load-shedding timetable.
Energy Minister Matthew Opoku Prempeh during a media encounter in Kumasi last month vehemently debunked the existence of dumsor. He asked those who are demanding a load-shedding timetable to create one for themselves.
The former Ayensuano MP said the power producing companies are working to increase capacity to meet demand. He explained that the power companies are facing technical hitches, thus preventing them from delivering to meet demand.
“We are having some power outages and according to the power agencies, they are saying that there is no ‘dumsor’ but technical challenges. ‘Dumsor’ happens when you don’t have enough power to produce or supply the exact peak demand that we need,” he said.
“As we speak, our peak production is around 3,600 megawatts and what we get is a little below that” so “we have a shortfall. What they [the power agencies] are saying is that the shortfall is not as a result of not having an installed capacity. The calculation is having about 5,000 plus installed capacity,” he said on The Big Issue on April 20, 2024.
Mr. Ayeh-Paye also denied the allegations that the power outages are due to financial issues. He contended that the claims that the government is not able to procurer fuel to power the various producing plants are not true.
“What the [Energy] Ministry is telling us is that the issue is not about us not having money to buy fuel. The issue is about some of the plants being under maintenance and repairs and the ECG is also telling us that they have challenges with their transformers,” he explained.