VRA Workers Deny Sabotaging Operations

Workers of the Volta River Authority have denied sabotaging the operations of the national energy company resulting in the 45-minute power outage that affected Ghana, Togo and Benin on Tuesday. The black-out occurred early in the evening after a sit-down strike initiated in the morning by the militant workers clamouring for the removal of their Chief Executive from office.

But senior and unionized staff of the VRA say the black-out occurred 4 hours after their strike ended and could not have been a result of their action because operations and security staff were at post during the industrial action.

In a statement responding to public accusation that the striking workers were saboteurs and should be held responsible for the outage, the senior and unionized staff said investigations show that there was a system collapse caused by a sudden loss of imported power from the Ivory Coast portion of the western corridor tie line.

The statement said the outage was a coincidence and not part of their planned programme for the day. The workers maintained that they will not resort to any action that will unduly undermine the economy and also dismissed suggestions that they were being propelled by political considerations.