Dumsor likely to come back – Minister hints

The Energy Ministry is assuring Ghanaians that the country will no longer return to the long dark days of power outages as experienced under the John Mills/Mahama administration.

However, it says there will be some intermittent outages as a result of localized faults which the government will work to resolve.

Addressing a joint press conference with heads of ECG, VRA, and GRIDCO on Monday, Energy Minister John Peter Amewu said the days of “dum kwraa” (total darkness) under the former administration will no longer be experienced.

However, he admitted there may be some “dumsor” (on and off) in some areas which government is addressing.

The country has over the last few days experienced some power outages with citizens venting their anger on both traditional and social media.

The Minister attributed the recent outages to a coincidence of events including the gas supply challenges to Karpower.

As a result, the Minister said over 800mw of power was lost during peak periods which resulted in the outages.

The Minister, however, said Nigeria gas which also could not supply due to some technical challenges will begin to supply 30 mega cubic feet which will be increased to 80 by close of the week.

In the wake of the recent outages, the opposition NDC has accused the government of failing to pay debts owed by the power producers.

But the Energy Ministry has debunked the claim.

While the sector minister admits there still remains debt to be paid to power producers, it is not the reason for the recent outages.

According to him, the NPP government inherited a debt of $2.8 billion in the energy sector and has retired over 500,000 with an outstanding $2.3bn still remaining.

Peter Amewu decried what he said were debts being incurred by ministries, departments, and agencies assuring steps are being taken to ensure these offices use solar forms of energy.