Accra, Feb. 17, GNA - A three-fold pragmatic action to forestall the recent interruptions in the supply of electricity throughout the country is being undertaken, Mr. Emmanual Buah, Deputy Minister for Energy, told Parliament on Wednesday.

He said Volta River Authority, (VRA), the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), were currently instituting the measures to address the interruptions.

Mr. Buah was answering a question tabled by Mr. Justice Joe Appiah, member for Ablekuma North.

He noted that VRA was adding generating units to increase the overall generating capacity; it was ensuring plant availability by improving maintenance protocol, spare parts stocks and thereby reducing machine down time.

VRA was also ensuring system reliability through closer coordination with sister utilities in developing reliable monitoring and communicating protocols, putting in place systems to identify and resolve faults.

GRIDCo was constructing the 4th circuit from Tema to Achimota to increase the transmission line capacity to the capital city, expanding the Mallam Substation to improve on the installed transformer capacity of the capacity of the capital city.

GRIDCo was also constructing the Accra 3rd Bulk Supply Point with additional transmission lines.

ECG was also constructing more primary substations and feeders, interconnecting of substations to provide enough redundancies as well as improve voltage and loss reduction projects among other steps.

Mr. Buah said with the implementation of these measures by the power utilities in the short term to medium term, the interruptions in the supply of electricity would be reduced considerably.

Electricity generation and supply in the country involved three major interrelated components, namely the VRA, the utility company that does power generation, GRID Co which was responsible for power transmission while the ECG had the mandate to distribute in the southern sector of Ghana. He said the Northern Electricity Department which is a subsidiary of the VRA had responsibility for power distribution in the northern sector of Ghana.

On a related question on street light project, Mr. Buah said the current policy was that upon completion of street light projects being undertaken directly by government, the respective metropolitan or municipal assembly was to take up the responsibility of maintenance. He said the main objective of the government's regional capitals street lights project was to increase security and safety on major roads in the capital cities. Government was financing this project through Suppliers Credit and Bilateral financing arrangement.

He however noted that for any other street lighting projects carried out by individuals or communities through communities own initiative, maintenance of the street light was carried out by the individual and the communities.