Nana Akomea
Government can still not regularly supply gas to domestic power producers two years after President John Dramani Mahama and his appointees described the Atuabo gas plant as an unprecedented achievement and a ‘game changer during its inauguration, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has stated.
According to a statement issued recently by the party, signed by Nana Akomea, Communications Director, the re-emergence of the power outages, otherwise called ‘dumsor’ in the country, constituted “another sad example of the incompetence, deceitfulness and corruption that has characterized President Mahama’s government in the energy sector alone.”
The NPP said like many Ghanaians, it was highly distressed that Ghana was paying almost $8.3 million a month to the AMERI Plant even though the plant has not generated any electricity in the past month.
“In the past month, however, government has not been able to supply this gas to AMERI because the Atuabo Gas Plant is not working and the Nigerian gas company N-Gas is not supplying gas because government has not paid the Nigerians for gas supplied.”
Deceit and inconsistency
It revealed that in spite of the unfolding terrible power situation, coupled with the unbearable tariffs and financial loss, the poor Ghanaian electricity consumers have been kept in the dark about the real situation on the ground, except that they are “fed with more lies, inconsistencies and untruths about electricity tariffs.”
Subsidies or realignment
It would be recalled that on July 3, this year, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) announced a reduction in electricity tariffs from 67 pesewas to 34 pesewas for every unit of electricity consumed.
The power distributor stated that such reductions would be secured through government’s provision of a subsidy of GH¢300 million that would be reviewed in December 2016.
Denial
On 5th July, 2016, President Mahama denied that there was an element of subsidy in the power tariff and stated that the reductions would be secured through what he termed ‘realignment.’
On 13th July, Finance Minister Seth Tekper, speaking to Accra-based Joy Fm, indicated that there would be a subsidy.
“So between the Ministry for Power, the ECG, Finance Ministry and the President who is telling the truth to Ghanaians?
“Another deceit over electricity is that while Ghanaians in the last months are going through load-shedding or dumsor, President Mahama has claimed there is no load-shedding going on, preferring to call what is going on as localised and temporary blackouts.”
Call for timetable
The NPP called on government “to listen to the cry of the industries and Ghanaians and stop the inexplicable denial and immediately publish a timetable for the ongoing dumsor.”
According to the party, government had refused to publish a schedule because that would amount to an admission of systematic load shedding or dumsor.
“But Ghanaians have been suffering a patterned load shedding over the last few months. Government’s refusal to acknowledge it and publish a schedule has meant that consumers and industry cannot plan, thus imposing uncertainty on the Ghanaian consumer in the midst of dumsor.”
By Samuel Boadi