Boakye Agyarko interacting with the party executives
THE Minister of Energy, Boakye Agyarko, has hinted that power outages popularly called dumsor, is now a thing of the past due to the efforts of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to revamp and revitalize the electricity and internet networks in the country.
“Dumsor will not surface again. We have resolved it,” he said with pride.
According to him, he’s very much convinced that the country would no longer experience power crisis, which became endemic under erstwhile John Mahama’s National Democratic Congress administration.
Mr. Agyarko gave the assurance when he was interacting with the newly elected executives of the Krobo Block of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – comprising Upper Manya, Lower Manya and Yilo Krobo – at Odumase- Krobo in the Eastern Region.
The minister’s assurance was in reaction to the impasse between the ECG and residents of Somanya and surrounding villages regarding high electricity tariffs.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) recently announced reduction in electricity tariffs to the excitement of Ghanaians.
However, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) kicked against the reductions by the NPP government, saying the exercise would collapse the system.
Some NDC Members of Parliament (MPs) are of the view that the measures put in place by the PURC to bring down electricity tariffs, effective March 15, are counter-productive and would bring back the days or erratic power supply.
Mr Agyarko appealed to the angry residents to open up for the ECG to have their long-standing problem of high electricity tariffs resolved.
He noted that dumsor was not caused by any technical problems but rather, financial mismanagement of the energy sector by the John Mahama administration.
“I have always said that dumsor was not a technical problem. It was as a result of financial mismanagement. For example, if you have a car and you park that car because you don’t have money to fuel it, when someone dashes you money or gives you a loan and you go and buy a brand new car, what are you implying? You have to use the money to buy fuel, but if you go and buy a car it means you don’t know the problem,” he posited.
Mr. Agyarko, who further briefed DAILY GUIDE on the current electricity situation, averred, “As far as I know, dumsor has been resolved and so it wouldn’t happen again.”
Mr Agyarko noted that “what remains to be the problem now is about some challenges with few substations in Awoshie, Kumasi, Sefwi Bekwai, Sefwi Asawinso and Bia areas. As I speak, ECG is working hard to address these challenges…They are building new substations to replace the old ones.”
In attendance were the Deputy Regional Minister – who doubles as the MP for Asesewa – Joseph Tetteh; Dr. Apotey, Yilo Krobo Constituency NPP chairman, among others.
FROM Daniel Bampoe, Krobo-Odumase