Former Member of Parliament for Ayensuano, Samuel Ayeh-Paye, has insisted that Ghana is not experiencing intermittent power cuts, commonly known as ‘dumsor,’ despite widespread outages plaguing homes and businesses.
Recent months have seen a surge in power outages, prompting calls for a load-shedding timetable from affected sectors.
Energy Minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh, during a media interview in Kumasi last month, adamantly denied the existence of ‘dumsor’ and challenged proponents of a load-shedding timetable to produce their own.
Speaking on The Big Issue on Citi FM and Citi TV, the former Ayensuano MP argued that Ghana currently possesses sufficient installed capacity to meet power demand but faces technical challenges hindering its full utilization.
“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.
“As we speak, our peak production is around 3,600 megawatts, and what we get is a little below that and we have a shortfall, and 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.”
Mr. Ayeh-Paye also dismissed allegations that the power outages are purely due to financial inadequacies in procuring fuel to power the various producing plants and also pay power producers.
“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.”
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