It was a bad decision for Energy Ministry to promise stable power in ten days - NPP MP

The Member of Parliament for Manso Adubia, Mr Yaw Frimpong Addo, has said it was a bad decision by the Energy Ministry to give timelines to end the outages being experienced nationwide.

The legislator told Kwabena Agyapong on Rainbow Radio 87.5Fm that such timelines, have serious consequences especially when you are able to meet them.

He was reacting to the press conference held by the Energy Ministry on Monday to apologise to Ghanaians and to assure them the recent outages would be addressed in ten days.

The Deputy Minister for Energy in charge of Power, Mr. William Owireku Aidoo, has declared that recent power outages would end within ten to twelve days.H

e said that the power outages, which have been happening continuously for weeks now, was due to an interconnection activity of joining Ghana Gas pipelines to that of the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAGPCo) to supply gas to the production plants.

Mr. Aidoo explained that this activity is an integrated process that requires that engineers take away all the flammable gas, and also de-pressurise both systems by shutting down both pipelines, and it would take about ten to twelve days for the engineers to resolve this situation and complete this action, hence, the reason for the current power outages.

According to him, this action has to be done because the gas coming from Nigeria is often delayed and has not been reliable lately.

His comments come after a report from the Executive Director of the African Center for Energy Policy (ACEP), Mr. Ben Boakye, purporting that the nation has returned to “dum-so”.

The legislator said Ghanaians suffered severely under the previous Mahama led administration, a situation that led to job loses and collapse of businesses. Due to the experiences in the past, Ghanaians are not ready to experience it again and so, if there is a challenge you do not have to give specific deadlines because you may be Ghanaians will judge you by your own timelines, he said.

The Ministry he said should have told Ghanaians they would resolve the challenge instead of saying emphatically that it was going to be resolved in ten to twelve days.

He has also slammed the NDC over what he termed as an attempt to paint a negative picture of the energy situation under the NPP.

The NPP to him is managing the energy sector better than what the NDC did.