The government of Ghana has given no assurances of dealing with the power crisis judging by the mid-year economic review and supplementary budget presented to parliament recently, and the situation will worsen due to government’s failure, Campaign Coordinator of the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), Dr Steve Manteaw has said.
“I can see the situation worsening. The only assurance in the supplementary budget is supposed to be some 400,000 barrels of oil, but that will not last for the rest of the year,” he told Prince Minkah on Class FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Tuesday July 26.
Critics have asked the government to be upfront with Ghanaians about the resurgence of the power crisis, but authorities have downplayed the state of the energy situation insisting that it has not gotten to levels that require load shedding.
Ghana experienced four years of erratic power supply that led to the collapse of some businesses and retrenchment of workers in some cases. The problem was eased after the arrival of two emergency power ships at the beginning of 2016.
However, in the past month, several areas have reported erratic power supply and blackouts – sometimes for a whole day. At Mamprobi, some residents have had cause to complain of power cuts for several hours, at least, thrice a week. The situation is no different for residents at Dansoman, Awoshie, Achimota, Taifa, Mile 7, and Kasoa.
Dr Manteaw argues that government should admit its shortcomings and take pragmatic steps to deal with the issue.
“We are just dancing around the problem and government appears to be living in self-denial. …Government should admit that it has failed in managing the economy efficiently as a result of which we are facing these problems,” he stressed.
For him, that will set the tone to “invoke a certain level of trust and confidence in a certain goodwill [from citizens for government] to go through the period of difficult decisions”, which need to be taken to eradicate the problem.
In his view, government is compounding the problems by focusing on generation plants without considering fuel to feed the plants.
“You cannot continue to add generation plants when the few you have, you have challenges in providing adequate fuel to make them run”.
He disclosed that the World Bank predicted the situation in a 2010 report “…but we did nothing and we have been caught in the problem”.
<<Print>>