Energy sector on its knees under NDC - Hammond

Ghana has not a single litre of oil reserve in the country, the minority New Patriotic Party has alleged.

This is a result of years of corruption, mal-administration and inefficient policies in the energy sector, the NPP spokesperson on energy, Kweku Tahir Hammond said at a news conference on Monday.

According to him, the NPP whilst leaving office in 2008, left an oil reserve of close to three months, which meant the nation could survive in the event of severe energy crisis but that is not the case under the John Mahama-led administration.

Having won power on promises to “ensure the delivery of energy services to all consumers in a secure, efficient, reliable, sustainable, safe and environmentally-friendly manner,” KT Hammond said the NDC has done very little to redeem their promise.

All they have to show for their close to five years in office is indebtedness to all the energy players in the country, he said.

"As of today the NDC Government owes the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies an amount of US$700m which is posing a threat to both the BDCs and the commercial banks in the country. BOST has also collapsed and the country has not a single litre of strategic oil reserves, when under the NPP Administration, efforts were made to store three months of strategic oil reserves," he alleged.

K.T. Hammond said the recent hikes in fuel prices were completely unjustified and is a testimony of the hypocrisy of the NDC government which promised to reduce fuel prices drastically.

He said the hikes have been necessitated by the growing depreciation of the country's currency, which is also a symptom of government's incompetence.

K.T. Hammond said the government has done very little to increase the energy generation capacity of the country.

"All that the NDC government has put forward as of now to increase our power generation capacity are plans and promises and nothing by way of concrete capacity installation to add to what the Kufuor Administration initiated. We have on various platforms stated that since the NDC took power in January 2009, it has added not a single megawatt of installed capacity to power generation.

In his last State of the Nation address, the late President Mills had been ill advised, as he was on many occasions, to proclaim that his government had since coming into power installed about 650 megawatts in generation capacity. This was promptly repudiated by the Ministry of Energy which stated that they had indeed added only 165 megawatts. But when challenged on the details of this assertion, it emerged that the NDC was claiming credit for NPP initiatives," he indicated.