Executive Director of African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam, has attributed the energy crisis in the country, known in the local parlance as ‘dumsor’ to system failure.
Speaking at the Business Television Africa (BTA) Business Summit in Accra yesterday, on the theme, “The Cost of Electricity and Its Damaging Effects On Ghana’s Industrialization”, he stressed that the underlining cause of Ghana’s energy crisis was due to the lack of proper mechanisms to ensure that the power sector works effectively.
The energy expert wondered why people still think that the electricity tariff in the country is better than some countries in the West Africa Sub-region.
“I disagree with people who say Ghana’s situation is better. I have done a comparative analysis of the situation in Ghana, Nigeria, La Cote D’ivoire, and results show that tariffs in Ghana currently are relatively higher”, he said.
According to him, the approach by government in solving the energy problem would be a dream if the country does not address the direct and indirect cost of energy production.
He observed that “unfortunately, we all seem to have thrown away the law that governs the supply of electricity because we are in crisis”.
Referring to the Electricity Supply and Distribution (Standards of Performance) Regulations, 2008, Acts 4(2) , he said, despite the sub regulation (1) , the supplier, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), must ensure that electricity interruption to a customer’s premises within an operational year does not exceed six periods, that is 16 average interruption frequency index.
He, however, revealed that “in 2012 alone, supply to metro or industrial areas recorded 69 periods, whiles urban areas recorded 88 periods.
He advised that taking into cognizance the amount of inadequacies and problems” we have at hand, government should rather not be seen boasting about its little achievements”.
Nevertheless, he said no politician should try and score political points with the energy crisis.
For his part, the President of Groupe Nduom, Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, said the current power crisis facing the country was also due to bad politics.
The business mogul who owns chains of businesses both within and without, noted that it was about time Ghana overcame the teething issues in the energy sector.
“The solution to the power problem is not technical, and it’s not only about generation. It cannot be solved completely in this year, or a year after; but needs a holistic approach”, Dr. Nduom reiterated.
According to him, if President John Dramani Manama meant to to solve the power crisis, then it would take this government at least four years to reach a meaningful solution.
He asserted that ,“we have not invested properly in generating plants that are efficient enough to give us value for our money”.
He added: “If government had done due diligence it would have realised that some of the plants acquired were old ones that were repackaged and sold to us to pay at high cost due to the so-called emergencies”.
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