Member of Parliament for Effia and member of Parliament’s Energy Committee, Isaac Boamah‑Nyarko, has warned that Ghana’s entire energy sector could collapse if urgent steps are not taken to address the impact of illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey.
Speaking in an interview on Citi Eyewitness News on Friday October 3 after a recent working visit by the Energy Committee to major power sector agencies including ECG, GRIDCo, VRA, and Bui Power, Boamah‑Nyarko revealed that interactions with these institutions offered committee members a deeper understanding of the challenges facing the energy sector.
“This particular visit which took the committee to ECG, GRIDCo, VRA, Bui amongst others gave the committee members an understanding of their operations, the challenges that they face. And you know for the first time you have MPs sitting freely with agencies, having lunch with them, having side-area conversations so they feel very relaxed to share all their concerns,” he said.
According to the MP, it was through these frank engagements that he fully appreciated how deeply the galamsey menace threatens the country’s power infrastructure.
“If not for this particular visit I wouldn’t have known that the consequences of the Galamsey menace is dire on all of us as a country. And if we are not very careful, our entire energy sector is also going to collapse,” he warned.
His remarks come days after similar concerns were raised by the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) during the committee’s visit. GRIDCo’s Deputy Chief Executive in charge of Engineering and Operations, Frank Otchere, described the situation as a “near disaster,” explaining that illegal miners were encroaching dangerously close to high-voltage transmission towers, particularly within areas cleared for line maintenance — known as right-of-way zones.
“Now the right-of-way clearing becomes lucrative to galamseyers. In a number of areas, we go and see that overnight people come and do their galamseying activities and it is very close to our towers,” Otchere said.
He noted that the foundations of these towers are engineered for specific terrains and any encroachment can destabilize them, posing a significant risk to the national grid. In some cases, urgent reinforcements had to be carried out to prevent collapse.
More troubling, Otchere revealed that GRIDCo maintenance teams have faced life-threatening attacks from armed individuals during routine inspections, with staff in some areas being shot at and forced to flee.
“There are some areas that even when our maintenance teams are going, they get shot at and some of them have had to run away,” he said.
He called for immediate national security support to protect critical energy infrastructure, stressing that GRIDCo alone cannot manage the escalating threat.
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