'Dumsor': Government not being truthful to Ghanaians - Former Energy Minister

Former Energy Minister and Member of Parliament for Ellembelle constituency in the Western Region, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, has accused government of not being truthful to Ghanaians in the wake of renewed energy crisis.

He says the country is expected to experience more power outages than what it is currently experiencing.

Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' program, he explained that contrary to the Energy Ministry's claim that the power outages would be intermittent, their checks reveal that power supply from the power generation companies to the distributors have reduced drastically.

"It is not a matter of gas supply as explained by the energy ministry, but I can confidently tell you that the government is saddled with lots of debt and until they are able to provide funds for payment, the power crisis will intensify," he added.

According to him, government is not doing enough to salvage the situation though the NDC government provided enough to sustain power supply in the country.

"Before we left office, we had provided adequate infrastructure to sustain the power supply in the country, from karpower to thermal, so it will be out of place if this government is telling us that power outages is going to be intermitent.

"This should not happen at all, the minister should come clear," he added.

The Energy Ministry however, is assuring that the country will no longer return to the long dark days of power outages as experienced under the John Mills/Mahama administration.

The ministry concedes though there will be some intermittent outages as a result of localised faults which the government will work to resolve.

Addressing a joint press conference with heads of ECG, VRA and GRIDCO on Monday, Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu, said the days of “dum kwraa” (total darkness) under the former administration will no longer be experienced.

However, he admitted there may be some “dumsor” (on and off) in some areas which government is addressing.

The country has over the last few days experienced some power outages with citizens venting their anger on both traditional and social media.

The Minister attributed the recent outages to a coincidence of events including the gas supply challenges to Karpower.

As a result, the Minister said over 800mw of power was lost during peak periods which resulted in the outages.