Constant blackouts in Cape Coast

Cape Coast, Aug. 21, GNA - Mr Johnny Edem Tornu, Central Regional Supervising Technician Engineer of the Volta River Authority (VRA), on Monday stated that the frequent blackouts being experienced by residents of Cape Coast municipality were due to a normal routine maintenance work being undertaken by the Authority at its sub-station in Cape Coast.

He said there was no political motive behind the situation the municipality had found itself in and that the issue was purely technical and the exercise, which had to be undertaken every six years was last carried out in 2001.

Mr Tornu stated these when the VRA in conjunction with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), at the instance of the Regional Minister, Nana Ato Arthur interacted with the press at the sub-station at Cape Coast.

The meeting was among other issues at explaining to the people through the media, circumstances leading to the constant blackouts. Mr Tornu pointed out that the maintenance work would take at least four weeks to complete after which the municipality and other towns dependent on the sub-station for would start enjoying electric power in accordance with the on-going national load shedding exercise. According to him, it was necessary the maintenance work was carried out now because any further delay would cause the transformer at the sub-station to break-down and its replacement would take the VRA more than nine months to do, thereby plunging the communities it served into total darkness during the period.

In an answer to a question, Mr Tornu stated that the maintenance work should have been carried out about three months ago but his outfit was prevailed upon to postpone it because of the PANAFEST and examinations due for students of the University of Cape Coast and senior secondary schools at that time.

Alhaji Dawudi Jangu, Regional Director, ECG stated that as a result of the on-going maintenance work VRA supplied his outfit with only nine megawatts of electric power instead of the 27 megawatts being the Region's total requirement.

He stated that the ECG had no alternative other than further ration power outside the schedule of the national load shedding exercise, resulting in the constant blackouts in the municipality and other communities the sub-station was serving, stressing that, the situation was not in any way connected with the current energy crisis in the country.

Nana Arthur, for his part reiterated that government was committed to dealing with the energy crisis to ensure constant electric power supply in the country and that it was in this regard that 400,000 compact florescent lamps, which conserved energy, were provided recently by the government for free distribution to the people in the Region.

He urged the media to educate the people about efforts government was making to solve the energy crisis, stressing that, "you should let the people of Cape Coast and other places know that the constant blackouts being experienced by them at the moment is not connected with the country's energy crisis".