Ghanaians may have to brace themselves for more unannounced power outages as power producers struggle to generate enough to meet the country’s demand.
Officials of the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG, in the Ashanti Region say they are unaware when the load shedding exercise currently underway in the Ashanti Region and other parts of the country will end.
According to the Ashanti Regional Public Relations Officer of the company, Erastus Baidoo, the company is uncertain about when the load shedding will end since the Volta River Authority (VRA) and other power producers are still grappling with some challenges.
Recently in the Ashanti Region, there have been many intermittent outages mostly unannounced. Residents in the Kumasi Metropolis in particular, are frustrated over the blackouts venting their spleen on the power distributor, ECG. Some angry residents have warned they may be forced to attack ECG officers dispatched to their homes to distribute electricity bills.
According to the angry residents, the amounts they pay for electricity monthly remains the same despite the many outages over a period. They are also unhappy about the damage caused to their electrical appliances.
But the Ashanti Regional Public Relations Officer of the ECG, Erastus Baidoo, addressing these concerns on Kumasi-based Ultimate Radio, said the ECG does not know when and how various areas in the Ashanti Region will experience power outages. He was speaking to Host of the Ultimate Morning Show, Kofi Owusu.
“Sometimes you may not have the full answers that our customers would need. In fact all that our customers need is that light should be on. The thing is that whether mornings, afternoon, evening, night, whatever time it is, our customers want the lights to be on. Reliable, regular, safe, quality, they want these things. But then again, those of us who operate the system, we see the challenges that are there and we have Atoabo, we may have this, we may have that, but at the end of the day, it may not necessarily entirely solve the problem” he stated.
“We have not been able to tell you that certain places will go off. The way it is, it is very difficult to say that this place or that place will go off. We are linked. ECG alone can’t do it because if we do it and VRA says well I’m afraid this programme cannot go on because take of this load, it distorts the programme” he explained.
Meanwhile the Communications Director of the Volta River Authority, Sam Fletcher has indicated that 30 percent of the country’s energy production is wasted. He says it is about time the country takes electricity consumption seriously to conserve energy.
“The last twelve months, pushing at 12 percent and I can tell you that going forward that figure will increase. The rate at which we consume electricity, we don’t have the corresponding investment on the supply end because the electricity that we supply, 30 percent goes to waste from the demand side. We start changing our attitude and behaviors towards how to use electricity, how to conserve energy and use it properly then we are able to save 30 percent on our own bill” he explained.