The Ministry of Energy has refuted claims by a former Minister of Power, Dr Kwabena Donkor, that the country risked slumping back into prolong power outages popularly referred to as “Dumsor” if urgent steps are not taken to address issues of increasing peak demands of electricity in the country.
According to the Ministry, the country had installed and was generating capacity in excess of more than 2,000 mega watts and this could serve the country for more than two years.
Speaking to the Ghanaian Times via telephone, the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Energy, Kwasi Obeng Fosu, said the statement by Dr Donkor was incorrect and far from the truth.
He said the assertion by the former Power Minister that there was a risk of returning to ‘dumsor’ by virtue of the state of generational capacity was nothing but fear mongering.
“In line with our projected demand and the prudent management of the Energy sector, the Ministry of Energy is confident that there is no way that this country will go back to the dark days of ‘dumsor’,” he stressed.
Mr Obeng-Fosu noted that what was of paramount concern to managers of the energy sector now was taking prudent steps to deal with the unnecessary take-or-pay contracts which had become an albatross around the neck of the country.
“The claim by Dr Donkor that the NPP government has not added ‘significantly’ to the energy generation capacity cannot be supported by the available facts. Government is of the view that there must be prudent addition to the generation capacity in order not to get the country into over-capacity and its associated issues, and that the addition must be premised on projected demand,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, a statement issued by the Public Relations Unit of the Ministry said the current government had added to the total generation capacity about 421MW since coming into power.
This he said brought the country’s total installed capacity to 5358.50MW, against the backdrop of current peak demand of 3,469MW which was recorded on March 18, 2022.
Mr Obeng-Fosu also acknowledged that due to minor works, faults and natural occurrences, certain parts of the nation were facing intermittent outages.
However, he assured that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and Grid Conpany (GRIDco) were up to the task and fixing these issues for all to continue to enjoy stable and reliable power for both domestic and industrial use.