Nationwide blackout not dumsor - Government

Wednesday night’s power outage across the country is not a telltale sign of the return to the days of load shedding, William Owuraku Aidoo, Deputy Minister of Energy, has said.

Mr Aidoo’s clarification comes after a system failure plunged Ghana into darkness, which made it impossible for the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) to supply power to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for distribution at about 9pm.

According to the Afigya Kwabre South MP, power supply had been restored to most parts of the country but dismissed talk that the countrywide power failure was a precursor to the acute power shortage (dumsor) that plagued Ghana for close to four years.

“…People are calling it ‘dumsor’, it is not that. ‘Dumsor’ happened when we could not generate enough power or didn’t have enough crude or gas to power our generators. But now we have the power. The fault is with the cables carrying electricity. So I beg to say that it is not ‘dumsor’ at all; it is only a fault…” he told Chief Jerry Forson on Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Thursday, 4 May, explaining that the problem had to do with a random fault in state power transmitter GRIDCo’s powerlines.

He, however, assured that all parts of the country would, in the next few hours, have electricity.