By Love Wilhelmina Abanonave
Government Spokesperson and Minister in charge of Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, says the Mahama administration inherited a “chaotic and poorly managed” energy sector, and resolving the crisis will take time.
Speaking on the GTV Breakfast Show, Kwakye Ofosu dismissed claims that President Mahama’s return to office has brought back widespread power cuts, known locally as dumsor, describing such assertions as “pure propaganda”.
According to him, the very first day President Mahama took office, he convened a high-level meeting with the subject being a major crisis in the energy sector.
He explained that in 2016, when the previous NDC administration left office, Ghana had excess energy capacity. However, the situation has since changed.
“When we were leaving power in 2016, we had redundant capacity — capacity that we didn’t even need immediately. As I speak to you, capacity meets demand exactly without reserve capacity. If you don’t have that, the system trips frequently, or you need a supply and nothing is left when there’s a breakdown or some emergency. When that happens, the system trips often. That is why you have those intermittent outages,” he said.
Mr Kwakye Ofosu further noted that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is burdened with debt and structural inefficiencies.
“The Electricity Company of Ghana alone owes 63 billion Ghana cedis. They collect far less than they spend to produce the power, so they are always at a loss.”
He added that the Finance Ministry had to intervene this year to prevent a total collapse of operations: “This year alone, the Finance Minister had to give them 28 billion Ghana cedis, which could have been used for other duties to enhance people’s livelihoods, so that they can pay part of their debts.”
On the issue of load-shedding, the minister denied any formal implementation of power rationing.
“There is no planned load-shedding, per se. Otherwise, a timetable will be published. We are not like others who will ask you to go and publish your own timetable. If there is load-shedding, a timetable will be put [out] so that you can plan your life.”
