Dumsor: Akufo-Addo destroying Mahama’s legacy – Minority

The minority in parliament has accused the Akufo-Addo led government of deliberately destroying the legacy of former President John Dramani Mahama in the energy sector.

According to the former Power Minister, John Jinapor, the actions of Akufo-Addo and his government appointees have led to the return of the current power challenges.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Jinapor also alleged that the government is behind the failure of GRIDCo to publish a general load shedding timetable in the wake of the erratic electricity supply.

Mr Jinapor claimed that GRIDCo had plans of publishing a general load shedding timetable but for the government interference.

Consumers of electricity across the country have been grappling with prolonged power outages over the past few months.

The development has been attributed to transmission and distribution challenges.

ECG has published a load management timetable to enable GRIDCo connect the Pokuase Bulk Supply Station to their lines next month.

The former deputy power minister, however, Yapei Kasawgu gave a 10 point plan the minority wants implemented to address the current power crisis.

“Government must desist from political interference in the management of the Energy sector. Consequently, Government must refrain from engaging in political appointments especially within middle management levels when vacancies are declared. Government and its communicators must desist from engaging in the propaganda on excess capacity and come out with a formula for absorbing capacity charges as part of operating cost.”

He intimated that “power sector managers must ensure that they pursue Long term planning to ensure fuel security for generating assets at the least cost possible. Government must allow Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to take the responsibility for their fuel supply requirements.”

Mr Jinapor noted that “immediate steps must be taken to aggressively address ECG’s spiralling technical and commercial losses currently estimated by its worker unions at 34% and the Ministry of Energy must conduct a comprehensive reconciliation of the total indebtedness of all players including government and its SOEs including (GNPC, GNGC, VRA, GRIDCo, CENIT, ECG, NEDCo) in a transparent manner.”

The last two points were that the Ministry of finance must take steps to utilize the $1 billion sovereign bond borrowed in 2020 to address the financial challenges of the Energy sector.

“Government must ensure that Energy sector SOEs Publish details of their financial statements including details and aging of their indebtedness as well as debts owed to them on time.”

He ended by stating that “government must come clean on the current power crisis as a matter of urgency and desist from engaging in blame games.”

“Shifting blame and providing conflicting information only goes to exacerbate the crisis which is threatening lives and businesses across the country,” he added.