We handed a dumsor-free power sector to NPP government – John Jinapor

Former Deputy Power Minister under the erstwhile Mahama administration, John Jinapor has accused government of failing to provide actual figures to back their claims of having resolved the country’s power crisis; ‘dumsor’.

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta during his presentation of the ‘Adwuma’ budget before the house in Parliament, credited the Akufo-Addo-led government for ending the years of erratic power supply that crippled Ghana’s economy and led to the collapse of businesses and job losses.

According to him, the Mahama-led administration in 2015 fixed the load shedding situation the country was plunged into as a result of the crisis facing the energy sector prior to their defeat to the New Patriotic Party in the 2016 elections, thus, Ghana was a ‘Dumsor-free’ country as at December 2016.

“I think that the minister was being economical with the truth, he did not state the facts. The minister makes the impression that they solved Dumsor.”

“The records from GRIDCO, the records from the Energy Commission would confirm that in the whole of 2016 we never had Load Shedding. We hand over a robust, resilient, Dumsor-free energy sector to the NPP. We admit that we had challenges but we resolved the challenges before we handed it over to them,” he said.

Mr. Jinapor described as hoax the assertions made by the Finance Minister, objecting that he only presented abstracts that it had improved the economy.

The former deputy Power Minister and legislator for Yapei Kusawgu flawed the Finance Minister’s announcement of reduction of tariffs in the years ahead calling it a bluff.

“The minister told us that they are going to reduce tariffs by 13% for residential users, I’m telling you that is a hoax, that’s a Trojan horse, because there are just three bands, 0 to 150, 150 to 300 and 300 to 600,” Jinapor said.

“The minister failed to tell us which band they collapsing, the minister failed to tell us when they are doing that. He says that they are now going to engage PURC because the PURC is an independent body. Section 4 of the PURC Act, Act 538 states that the PURC is not subject to any manipulation or any control.”

“So what if you take your proposals and they run the scenarios and realize that it’s not going to work?” he queried.

The Akufo-Addo-led government presented its second financial blueprint to the House of Parliament on Wednesday, November 15.

The 2018 budget presented by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta on behalf of the President was greeted with counteractions from members of the Minority in Parliament.

Similar to Minority’s reaction to the 2017 ‘Asempa’ Budget presented in March, several minority members have yet again described the 2018 budget as 419 and ‘Wahala Budget’.