The Volta River Authority (VRA) has promised that the renewed challenges facing the nation’s power sector will ease by the close of business Monday.
Head of Corporate Communication at VRA, Gertrude Koomson, says Ghanaians should be experiencing stable power supply in the coming days because the Authority has been able to power two of the plants that run on gas.
“About 400,000 barrel of crude oil that arrived last week has been treated and two of the terminals are on LTO and we are expecting by the close of the day [Monday] that we should be able to make up whatever deficit there is,” she said.
Even though the nation’s power distributor, Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has been running a load-shedding programme, it has refused to come out with a timetable to help industries and individual homes to manage the use of the energy.
The government has said it will not call the renewed power challenges as load-shedding but rather a “generational problem.”
According to President John Mahama, the recent attack on the oil sector in Nigeria has had a toll on Ghana’s energy sector.
Presenting government’s Supplementary Budget to Parliament Monday, Finance Minister, Seth Terkper, said the government has invested heavily in the energy sector, adding, the challenges the nation is facing is that of non-availability of gas.
“Hence, in a bid to ease the current challenges, Government is delivering about 400,000 barrels of light crude oil to feed and add to the stock for our dual-fuel plants, while planning to resolve the gas supply bottlenecks,” he said.
Commenting on the current challenges in the energy sector, ranking Member of Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, K. T. Hammond, says government has proven that it is not capable of solving the challenges.
He said the government is “hopeless, useless, and confused” about what to do to salvage the worsening power challenges.
But speaking to Joynews, Mrs Gertrude says, government has reached an agreement with the Nigerian Authorities to ensure an unabated supply of gas to Ghana.
Even though the 400,000 barrel of crude oil supplied to the country is below the requested number, she believes the Authority should end Dumsor by utilising the current supply which is going several stages of conversion.
-myjoyonline