Business News of Saturday, 8 December 2018
Source: citibusinessnews.com
2018-12-08
Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG)
The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) has assured that the coming in of the Power Distributing Services (PDS), which is the motherboard of Meralco Consortium, the company chosen to manage the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will completely end power crisis in the country.
This was revealed to Citi Business News on the sidelines of an Energy Efficiency and Conservation curriculum project stakeholder’s workshop in Accra.
The project, which is in its pilot phase is to be rolled out as a national program at pre tertiary schools and is to be funded by government.
Speaking to Citi Business News, Director, Generation Project at MiDA, Mawunyo Rubson said power outages will be completely stopped with the coming in of the new concessionaire next year.
“As we are all aware, the successful bidder has been Meralco but they formed a consortium, the Power Distributing Services (PDS) and they will actually see to the operations of ECG. Once they come onboard and that certainly should have positive effect on generators to make sure that they stay in business and they can expand their operations to also make sure that we don’t run into dumsor any longer”.
He was of the view that the new management will work at reducing losses to make ECG very efficient.
“I am very positive obviously because of the interventions the compact is making. Once we are successful, we should not expect any relapse into Dumsor.” He said.
The frequent power outage popularly was at its peak between 2014 and 2016.
Ghanaians have recently complained about the frequent power outages popularly known as Dumsor which affected business.
Government earlier denied reports and assertions that Dumsor has returned, saying it was as a result of some technical challenges.
The Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu however explained that the situation was due to intermittent power outages as result of shortage of gas.
It also emerged that the government’s inability to reach an agreement with the West African Gas Pipeline Authority (WAGPA), concerning charges for the transfer of gas from the Western part of the country to the East, partly contributed to the erratic power supply.