The Deputy Minority Leader, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, has urged the government to be transparent with the public regarding the ongoing power crisis in Ghana.
Various parts of the country are grappling with power outages, despite unfulfilled promises from the government to address the issue.
This call for transparency follows the disconnection of electricity supply to the Parliament House and Job 600, the MPs’ office complex, due to a GHc23 million debt on February 29.
The power interruption lasted nearly three minutes before being restored through a generator by the Electricity Company of Ghana National Taskforce.
In an interview with Citi News’ Richard Sky, Mr. Buah criticized the government’s handling of the energy sector and called for acknowledgement of their failure.
He emphasized the necessity for strategic investment in power generation to meet growing demand and avoid recurring power crises.
Mr. Buah expressed concern about the reduction in exports to neighbouring countries, affecting forex earnings. He highlighted the need for an open discussion about the ongoing energy crisis and criticized the government for mismanaging the energy sector levy.
“This government must be very transparent with the people of Ghana. The President, unfortunately, has not been forthright with the people of Ghana. This President came in 2017 and this has been the pattern and I think that we should look at the history. We’re now being caught up with the deficit, always the demand is growing, and we have not been able to meet the demands. The government must admit to Ghanaians that they have not been strategic when it comes to the energy sector. We have ‘Dumsor’ today because we have failed.”
“Every time we don’t invest in power generation, because there’s an annual increase in demand for power, we are going to be caught up, the way we were caught up in 2009. For 7 years there was no power addition,” he stated.
He also bemoaned the cut in loads of exports to neighbouring countries.
“What’s worse is that we have also cut loads for all exports. This is like the breadbasket of the power producers. That is where they get their forex, foreign money.”
The Deputy Minority Leader also stated that some parliamentary staff were trapped in an elevator at the Job 600 building due to the power cut, emphasizing the severity of the situation.
“The whole parliamentary building was off, the only place we had lights because we are using a pre-paid standby generator is the chamber. And I’m sure this is part of the bigger problem we have. We’re shedding the load, 3 days ago it was 380, and I know we are shedding 400 megawatts of load. It has not been announced as we have asked them to publicly do. They are taking off loads from different places, after the other. 480 megawatts is huge load, which is like not giving load to the whole of Sekondi Takoradi. And so, there’s a huge load.”