General News of Tuesday, 27 November 2018
Source: citinewsroom.com
2018-11-27
William Owurako Aidoo, Deputy Minister for Energy
Ghanaians must not be quick to forget that they suffered worse power outages under the previous NDC government, this is the admonishment by a Deputy Minister for Energy, William Owurako Aidoo to Ghanaians.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Monday, he said the recent power outages under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government is only a week of erratic power supply that has even been solved.
He said the NPP government, unlike the NDC, has conceded its difficulty and given tangible reasons to Ghanaians about why the challenges were experienced.
“We have explained to Ghanaians that yes we have had difficulties and we faced it head on and we solved the problem…Ghanaians, we shouldn’t have short memories; we should not. A government that presided over four years of ‘dumsor’ have the audacity to come and tell Ghanaians that the world is coming to an end because we’ve had one week of erratic power supply, which we have [even] given tangible reasons for why it came about,” he said.
He was reacting to the former Deputy Minister for Power during the NDC administration, John Jinapor, who said the government was peddling untruths and trying to paint a picture of smoothly running the energy sector when there are deep liquidity challenges.
John Jinapor on the show said the government was misapplying funds made available by the NDC government to pay for energy sector debts hence increasing debts within the sector.
But William Owurako Aidoo believes that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has no right to comment on the recent power outages because they presided over a worse power situation.
“Isn’t it ironic that one week of power fluctuation has become news and John [John Jinapor] has the audacity to come and stand on radio and talk to the good people of Ghana about there being one week of power fluctuation when his government presided over more than 3 years of power outages?, he quizzed.
The government had in many previous interviews denied that the challenge was financial, but at a press conference on Monday, the sector minister, John Peter Amewu, conceded that there were some financial issues that delayed processes to resolve the power challenge.
Mr. Amewu, however, stressed that the challenges of Ghana’s power supply and the power cuts citizens suffered are now under control.
“The Ministry of Energy wants to assure the public that the situation now is very much under control.”