Blame Finance Minister for recent dumsor – Energy expert

Energy expert Kojo Poku has charge the Finance Minister to come out with a road map for settling the energy sector’s indebtedness.

He said issues confronting the energy sector leading to the country experiencing power outages in the past few weeks are both technical and financial, and that the problem will be solved if the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori- Atta intervenes to settle energy sector debts.

“There is a financial challenge, and there is also a technical challenge, the financial challenge is exposed when you are now dealing with the technical challenge,” he explained.

According to Kojo Poku, it is important that the finance ministry comes clean and deal with the issues to ensure that there is stable power in the country.

Speaking on TV3’s news analysis programme the Key Points on Saturday, Mr. Poku said the Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu ought not to be blamed for the energy sector woes, and that the finance minister is the right person to address the issue.

“If the government is servicing its indebtedness, private entities will supply. What is happening in the energy sector is that there is indebtedness in the sector. Everybody keeps blaming the energy minister and they think it is an energy sector matter, it is not, and it is a ministry of finance matter.

“The minister of finance sits back and let the energy minister face all the bashing. It is the minister of finance who should own up and tell Ghanaians what plans you have in place to settle some of these debts.

“People are bashing the wrong person, if you ask anybody they will say it is Amewu, but it is not his fault. It solely a finance ministry problem, and the ministry of finance should come out on the issue,” he stressed.

The energy expert further stated that the energy sector indebtedness will continue to be a problem with intermittent power outages if the finance ministry does not intervene to settle debts.

There has been intermittent power outages for the past weeks following a directive from the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDco) for the Power Distribution Service (PDS) to shed load.

GRIDco stated that the need to shed load was as a result of a limitation in the transmission network as a result of construction work going on at Pokuase in Accra.

After weeks of power outages in most parts of Accra, GRIDco directed the PDS on Friday, April 6 to suspend the load-shedding since they had enough power to supply across board.