Load Shedding Expected To End In May - Prez Mahama

President John Mahama has given assurances that the current load shedding exercise being rolled out by the nation�s energy providers, is expected to end in May. In the wake of public outrage over the current erratic power supply, President Mahama has stated that government has put in place a long term comprehensive plan to ensure the supply of 5000 mega watts of power by 2016. Speaking at a meeting with a cross section of journalists on Friday, the President said: �As gas starts coming from Nigeria, then Asogli can then come back on stream. That can immediately put 200 megawatts and that can effectively stop the load shedding. T3 has started and it�s running at 87 megawatts now and we are going to ramp it up to 133. I went to Bui and they have finished the dam, they�ve finished installing turbine one, they�ve done the distribution system and everything.� President Mahama revealed that though the Bui project was going to be commissioned in September, �we are asking them to start turbine one and so if they start turbine one, another 133 megawatts will come into the system.� �The expectation is that by April, into May, we should have fairly stabilized the system and gotten rid of the load shedding and that is the plan we are using,� he added. President Mahama also mentioned that both renewable and thermal energy, plus the exploitation of all mini hydro sites are ongoing to ensure that Ghana achieves 5,000 megawatts in 2016. On the water situation, the President revealed that plans were underway to meet the water demand of the Greater Accra Region. He noted that this was going to be possible after the construction of a new recycling plant to produce 40 million gallons of water. �We estimate total demand at about 130 million gallons a day and if Weija is producing at full capacity at 58, Kpong is producing at 40, that makes 98 so there is a short fall of almost 30 million gallons so if this new plant comes in at 40 million gallons, then it will make up for the demand in Accra.�