John Jinapor speaking with the media
Minority members of Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee have expressed outrage about the load shedding situation in some parts of the country.
According to them, the Minority side has been monitoring the power situation over the past month, and based on the information they have, the power sector appears to be collapsing.
Addressing the media in Parliament yesterday, spokesperson for the group, John Jinapor, said since February 2, 2024, there has been persistent and consistent load shedding by the generation companies.
“Indeed, the load shedding is getting worse by the day. The very day His Excellency the President was delivering the State of the Nation Address boasting, at that very period the utility companies were shedding load,” he stated.
He claimed that the situation appeared to be worsening, adding, “On Wednesday alone, there was a whopping 530 megawatts of deficit, culminating in the curtailment of power to Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Togo.”
“You [referring to the media] will attest that there was some massive darkness yesterday. Today [Thursday] at 12:00pm, load shedding will commence again,” he asserted.
“Our investigation indicates that some of the thermal plants are down. Specifically, Taco is down, Tico is down and so they are not generating enough power,” he stated.
He, however, stated that there is a lack of fuel in the system and blamed it on ‘financial constraints,’ alleging that the government has been unable to buy adequate fuel to run some of the thermal plants, resulting in the load shedding that some parts of the country were experiencing.
“One month of load shedding is more than enough. This is not sporadic; this is continuous, persistent, and we think that the handlers of the power sector should do the onerous thing by informing the people of Ghana so that they can plan ahead of time.
“This deliberate fixation on denial and deceiving the people of Ghana can no longer hold,” he noted.
The Minority called on President Akufo-Addo and his government to do the needful by “telling the people of Ghana the truth.”
“We also call on the government to look for money wherever they can find the money to procure heavy fuel to power the thermal plants,” Jinapor pleaded.
“We cannot have this quantum of thermal complementarity and still shed loads,” he concluded.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House