The Executive Director of the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ben Boakye, has criticized the Akufo-Addo government for its continuous comparison of its accomplishments in resolving the nation’s power crisis with that of the former President John Mahama administration.
He argued that it is incorrect for the current government to compare its efforts to combat the power crisis with the efforts of the erstwhile Mahama administration.
Mr Boakye held government officials responsible for their inability to resolve the recent sporadic power outages, commonly known as ‘Dumsor’.
On February 27, during the State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo asserted that Ghanaians have not experienced “Dumsor” in recent years under his administration.
In an interview on Citi TV’s Point of View, hosted by Bernard Avle, the ACEP director attributed the issues in the energy sector to inefficiencies and wastage by government officials.
“People are failing to deliver on their responsibilities to ensure that power generated can be sold. That is the problem we have today. Once we have generation plants, we are not making any sense comparing ourselves [Akufo-Addo government] to the past government.
“Because their challenges were different. Their challenge was to bring in a power plant to solve ‘Dumsor’. Once we have the power plants, we have to move on to other challenges we have as a country and address the challenges. The challenge we have is people who are not delivering on their mandate. To make sure that the public purse is not sacrificed the way we are doing.
He emphasized, “If you ask me the fundamental challenges of the energy sector today, there are inefficiencies, and wastage that are grappling the entire nation. The waste I talked about is the fact that we can now as a nation sell electricity and make money to pay the value chain.”
Mr. Boakye expressed concern over the government’s debts to stakeholders in the value chain, accusing the government of not taking sufficient measures to address the issues related to electricity.
“Those transmitting, generating power, supplying fuel are owed and the only thing they hear from the president is that we want to isolate the cost of fuel from what we owe the generators of power. I don’t think that is how you address a problem,” he asserted.
The ACEP boss also expressed disappointment in the president for not outlining strategies to resolve the electricity crisis.
“I’m hoping that in the coming days, we will see pragmatic efforts to deal with this, otherwise the sustainability of the energy sector is under threat.”
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