EDITORIAL: The Power Outages

For the past three months, Ghanaians have been expressing concern over the erratic supply of electricity, for both domestic and industrial use, by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). Some have even suggested that the ECG was secretly rationing power, but the government and other players in the industry have come out to deny the claim. Despite this denial, the situation has still not changed, as power has been going on and off almost on a daily basis, destroying electrical appliances in homes. The development compelled Parliament to summon a Deputy Minister of Energy, Mr. Emmanuel Kofi Buah, to explain to them the cause of the problem. In his statement on the floor of the House, Buah said the equipment being used to transmit and distribute the power were obsolete, and that the government needed $1 billion capital investment in the medium-term to stabilise the situation. Over the past ten years, the Deputy Minister said electricity demand had grown at an average annual rate of about 7%, an indication that to keep pace with the demand, the ECG must find the resources to keep expanding the network, in such a way that the size of the network infrastructure has to double every 10 years. According to the Deputy Minister, during the peak hours of 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. each day, voltage levels in Kumasi and northwards were below normal levels, making the distribution of power very difficult across the country. According to him, such events could result in severe system disturbances, which can sometimes result in the total collapse of the system, or require that significant portions of the load are curtailed. A former Minister of Energy, Mr. Kofi Addah, was however convinced that all the investments made towards the restoration of the power supply should have changed the fortunes of the distribution and transmission system, with the support that the sector received from other countries. To him, the outages the Deputy Minister talked about should not be an issue at all. He noted that a lot of money had gone into the transmission and distribution of power over the last couple of years, and for that matter, there should be some significant improvement, which according to him, the Minister was not able to tell the House how much had gone into it. Though, he admitted that the problem of power outage had been lingering for sometime now, the former Minister said it had become worse of late, and therefore called on the government to make a conscious effort to fix it. The explanation, which was given by the Deputy Minister, and the reaction of a former sector minister, shows clearly that something has gone wrong, but Ghanaians are not being told the truth. Whatever be the case, The Chronicle is calling on the government to make a conscious effort to raise the $1 billion to salvage the situation. Electricity is the kingpin of industrialisation, so it is incumbent upon the government to find a solution to the problem, if we are to raise investor confidence in our economy. Because of our oil find, coupled with a stable democracy, which is being envied even by western democracies, a number of businesses are relocating to Ghana, so we must not allow this energy problem to erode investor confidence. Looking at the status Ghana has attained, it is a disgrace for us to be going through this trouble, and something must be done now!