Dumsor rebranded: You may have light you cannot use

When the Ministry of Power announced a few weeks ago of an end to the four-year- old power crisis that had bedevilled the country, many were those who doubted its feasibility.

What is true is that many households in parts of the country still have lights at home, even after the yuletide, except that the currents are so low it is almost useless.

Residents in most parts of the country have complained about very low voltages, which have lasted for days, in what seems to be the new phase of dumsor in the country.

A resident of Kwabenya, a suburb of Accra, told WEEKEND FINDER her area has been witnessing low voltage for over a week now.

“In fact, the currents are so low you can’t use it for anything. When you put on the ceiling fan, it takes about two minutes to propel it to move the blades and another two minutes for a blade to turn 360. In fact, if they don’t want us to use the lights they should just put it off; at least that is what we are used to”, she said.

In most areas that continue to experience the ‘rebranded power distribution’, residents are unable to do anything meaningful with the power they are served with.

“I can’t even iron my clothes; all I am able to do with the light is to charge my phone with it.”, another frustrated resident told Weekend Finder.

It is unclear what the power situation will be in the coming weeks when industries resume full operations, but, at least, Dr Kwabena Donkor, before resigning his post as Power Minister, was convinced he had done so much that he would be surprised if the Electricity Company of Ghana still continued to shed power, and to this, the Ministry of Power issued a statement announcing an end to dumsor.

A few hours after Dr Donkor resigned for reasons yet unknown, the load shedding committee, headed by GRIDCo boss William Amuna, in a statement announced that despite significant gains made, the program cannot be said to be over.

“The load shedding Committee wishes to inform the general public that steps being taken to permanently end the management of the power gap have produced significant gains.

This notwithstanding, we wish to state that there still exists residual milestones to be attained to end the load shedding as it relates to electricity supply. These are being addressed in earnest.

The committee will meet early in January 2016 to further review the progress made. Ghanaians and industry will be apprised of the outcome of the meeting.

We wish to express our deepest appreciation to all stakeholders for cooperating with the committee”, the statement said.