Don’t play “political football” with ‘dumsor’ – Nduom

Businessman Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom is mad at politicians for doing partisan politics with the erratic power outage.

According to him, the worsening electricity situation popularly known as ‘dumsor’ has resulted in loss of jobs and lives hence “let’s not play political football with this important matter.”

The leader of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) last week called on Ghanaians “to swear not to forget” the ‘dumsor’ that has hit Ghana for close to three years now.

He said “some usual political suspects chose to read the statement I wrote through extreme partisan political lenses. Some even tried to play the blame game with it. More than one person asked me what I did when I was Minister of Energy seeking to link me with the "dum" state of affairs.

“They forget or perhaps don't know how powerful leadership is and the difference the right kind can make to any situation. Someone can take a positive situation and turn it into a spectacular failure. Let's not play political football with this important matter.”

“I wrote about "dum" because of the damage it has done. Some citizens have lost their lives. Countless numbers of appliances - fridges, freezers, televisions etc. have been destroyed. Many employees have lost their jobs. A number of businesses have closed and others are suffering the burden of high cost of being in business. We have lost at least 2% of our Gross Domestic Product as a country because of it. Gone, never to return,” Nduom wrote on his Facebook wall.

“How can we forget this unprecedented damage in the midst of tremendous resources at our disposal? And how can we forget about those in charge of affairs? Should we not hold them accountable for what we have suffered? Accountability is one sure way of making sure that they do not think that we have accepted to make "dum" a permanent part of the Ghanaian way of life.”

Nduom added: “I am a manufacturer. I have lost money and international sales opportunities as a result of "dum". These export sales will not come back. We are working even harder than before to find new export opportunities. It is taking us four days to produce samples for export customers what should take us less than two hours. How do we create employment and earn valuable foreign currency that way?

“Anyone who things [sic] about this on partisan political lines has some more thinking to do. "Dum" and its negative effects are real.”