Ghana announces measures to deal with power cut
Government on Tuesday announced immediate step to address the load shedding challenge, with an assurance that there would be resumption of supply of electricity from the West African Gas Pipe-line (WAGP) in the next few weeks.
President John Dramani Mahama said Government would redouble its efforts to make up the shortfall by speeding up projects being worked on.
In a Policy Action Statement for the next few months before Election 2012 outlined in Accra, President Mahama said government had galvanized every effort to increase the nations electricity generating capacity, in order that the minimum demand by Ghana’s industries was met.
He admitted that the challenge with the nation’s electricity distribution infrastructure was that the pace of replacing age-old infrastructure had not been at par with the country’s growing needs.
He noted with regret an irregular supply of natural gas from Nigeria which had resulted in shortages in the generation capacity, and recently a disruption in the WAGP had knocked out 320MW of the nation’s generating capacity.
“This has led to a resumption of load shedding. Government has taken immediate steps to address the load-shedding challenge.
“I have directed that an Inter-Ministerial committee chaired by the Minister of Energy must, with immediate effect, engage the critical consumers of electricity, in particular, health and water supply facilities and key private industry establishments, to implement measures that will ensure that the nation’s strategic services and industry are not unduly disrupted.
“I am further directing the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURC) to strengthen their citizen complaints unit, and publish what measures they take when citizens complain of poor service from the Electricity Company and water supply service providers,” President Mahama said.
President Mahama gave the assurance that by the end of October, there would be an additional 300 megawatts of electricity production that would come online for distribution, and this should greatly reduce the inconvenience of load-shedding.
Noting that a major constraint had been the non-availability of metres, President Mahama announced that he had directed the release of funds to acquire meters for completion of electricity projects.
Source: GNA