Quickly fix power challenges to avert negative effects on operations of industries - AGI

As the Ghana Grid Company rolls out its announced system upgrade of some of its transformers in the country, the Association of Ghana Industries is raising an alarm of businesses being affected should the exercise drag.

According to the Chief Executive Officer of the AGI, Seth Twum Akwaboah, GRIDCo should hasten its works while ensuring that they stick to their announced schedule, reports citibusinessnews.com.

Earlier, GRIDCo had announced that it was undergoing a system upgrade across the country which could lead to a temporary interruption in supply, coming on the back of recent irregular power supply in parts of the country.

Although the company explained that those were due to system challenges, many have been wondering if the days of erratic power supply, popularly known as dumsor, were returning.

Speaking on the subject, Seth Twum Akwaboah explained that there is the need for things to be done right but soon so that it does not plunge some businesses into negative operations.

“We all experienced the recent power cut but our understanding of it as it has been explained by GRIDCo that it was a technical problem, and once you are working with machines you will occasionally have this situation. So for us, we are not seeing it as a dumsor situation, we see it as a technical situation hitch and that is understandable as long as we are able to quickly rectify it. But we only advise that at all times, we must be very vigilant and make sure that we do everything possible to prevent such technical hitches because in the industry the slightest hitch can affect you big time,” he said.

Further, he said that, “You could have some of the machines taking several hours to heat up before it becomes ready for production. So, if all the energy you have stored before production starts suddenly goes off and you lose it then that becomes a problem. But I think that GRIDCO has done well by announcing in advance, so once the notice is given in advance then I don’t think there should be too much of a problem or too much of a worry. It should be rectified and that is fine.”

Meanwhile, Johnathan Amoako-Baah, the CEO of GRIDCO has once again allayed the rising fears of Ghanaians that the days of erratic power supply (dumsor) is returning.

“What we are experiencing is not the ‘dumsor’ we know of. This is something that happens not often but intermittently sometimes in the sector for us to do some work. Sometimes, there is a fault that we need to attend to in order to bring the situation back to normal. Dumsor is not coming back. From my point of view, I have to say it as it is; devoid of politics. I have to assure people that what they are thinking is not what it is,” he stressed.