The Minority Caucus of Parliament has called on the leadership of the House to summon the Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, to provide an update on recent power cuts.
The caucus bemoaned the impact of the power cuts’ on households and businesses.
“Many people and businesses are unable to plan their activities and their programmes, and they also sometimes have to find extra money to power their generators for their businesses and many people do not know what is happening.
“They are told that there are planned and unplanned programmes and load is being shed, so it is important that the leadership of the House makes it possible for the Energy Minister to brief the House next week on the power situation and why fellow countrymen and women have to deal with the on and off situation. Ghanaians need to understand why they sleep in darkness.”
MP for Tamale Central, Ibrahim Murtala Mohammed, also recounted a harrowing incident where a National Service Personnel was trapped in one of Parliament’s lifts due to a power cut.
“My issue has to do with the erratic power supply. Just two days ago, there was a National Service Personnel who was trapped in one of the lifts when the power went off. She was traumatized when she finally exited the lift and so are we able to quantify the psychological trauma that people go through as a result of this and so it is essential that the Minister for Energy responds to this House to explain to us so we can explain to our constituents what is happening.”
Meanwhile, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has attributed the power outages in parts of Accra and other regions to maintenance issues.
According to the Managing Director of ECG, Samuel Mahama, the company has recently grappled with issues of maintenance rather than fuel-related problems.
“We are having major maintenance issues, the issue we are having now has nothing to do with fuel. You are relying on a power plant that is to give you about 360 megawatts then around 4 pm the gas emergency safety valve has a problem. What do you do? It is a machine.
“The machine failed us and we kept on saying that it’s a machine issue that we were trying to fix”.