'Dumsor': VRA shuts down plants over GHC1.3bn debt

The Volta River Authority (VRA) has shut down all of its thermal plants at Tema due to the company’s inability to buy fuel to power them.

The company, according to Accra-based Joy FM, is riddled with debts amounting to several billions of Ghana Cedis. Sources say the VRA has borrowed as much as GHC1.3 billion from local banks but is struggling to repay the loans.

The development means that the VRA is no longer in the position to supply the megawatts needed to augment the national grid in the existing power crisis.

Meanwhile, President John Mahama has said the ongoing power crisis will end before the 2016 election.

The president gave the extended time when he was speaking in Tamale on Saturday, indicating that it could not be a campaign message for the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP).

"Dumsor will end before 2016 elections," Mr Mahama told an NDC gathering on Saturday.

He had earlier assured Ghanaians that December 2015 would be the last time to see dumsor and that he intends to fix the problem and not to manage it.

However, his latest pronouncement may give credence to political critics' assertion that he was delaying solution to the crisis for electoral gains.