Hotline maintenance does not require power cut – ACEP educates Energy Minister

The Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has lashed out at Energy Minister, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, for saying the lights are going off because they are fixing transmission faults.

Addressing Ghanaians through his official Twitter handle, the Minister shared a short video explaining the necessity for the erratic power supply in the country.

According to Dr Opoku Prempeh, this particular outage is not 'dumsor' but rather “dumsiesie” - meaning off and fix.

“People are hanging on 330KV and 161,000-volt power lines to upgrade the power cables. We can’t have electricity running through these lines whilst work is being done on it. So we have to put out the lights somewhere so that someone can do that work.”

He continued that this is why power cuts have been happening across the country. He said the current situation is not the same as the significant power cuts, ‘dumsor’ that Ghanaians experienced between 2012 and 2016.

But reacting to this, ACEP’s Benjamin Boakye said the engineers know how to fix faults without necessarily putting off people’s lights in dumsor.

He termed it “hotline maintenance” and urged the minister to find out from the right people.

Last week, the Electricity Company of Ghana rolled out an eight-day power outage schedule for some parts of the national capital to enable them to undertake some maintenance works on some GRIDCO facilities.

Speaking at a press briefing, the Minister was unsure whether there would be an extension of the power outage schedule or not.

“There has been a dumsor timetable for those in Accra who are served by the Pokuase substation, and ECG published a timetable for that and it ends today. I cannot stand here and give you a yes or no answer, but we are sure that for whatever they needed to do and for whatever reason they came with the timetable, it ends today.”

The power interruptions started on Monday, May 10, 2021.

ECG had explained that the timetable had become necessary due to the ongoing works on the Pokuase Bulk Supply Point, hence the need to shut down the transmission line which was expected to affect the Mallam Bulk Supply Point that supplies power to many households.