Business News of Tuesday, 30 March 2021

Source: starrfm.com.gh

GRIDCo’s financial crisis cause of recent ‘dumsor’ – Jinapor

Former deputy Minister for Energy and Petroleum, John Jinapor Former deputy Minister for Energy and Petroleum, John Jinapor

The Minority caucus in parliament is accusing the government of deceit over the recent power outages being experienced in the country.

Frustrations are intensifying over Ghana’s energy sector following unending power outages recorded in different parts of the country.

With several homes without lights over the weekend, many Ghanaians poured onto social media demanding answers.

Speaking to Starr News, ranking member on the energy committee of the house John Jinapor said the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDco) is broke.

According to him, the power producer doesn’t have the financial ability to invest in tools to supply electricity to the growing population.

He said, “if you know that you are going to undertake a maintenance job and that a certain area will be knocked off, is it not proper, prudent, professional that you inform customers within the affected areas so they can plan their life?”

“They are not telling the truth. We also have people there. GRIDCo is bankrupt, That’s a fact. They don’t have money. Over the past four years, they’ve been struggling to stay afloat and so they’ve not been able to maintain a lot of their equipment. A lot of their equipment is now obsolete”.

He further indicated that “there’s population growth, so there’s an increase in consumption, there’s pressure on ECG’s equipment and there’s pressure on GRIDCo’s equipment.”

“Before we left office, the issue of generation was dealt with. So, the major problem is not the generation, it’s how to evacuate the power to you the end-user and it is because of years of neglect because of their financial predicament, that is why we are going through the current load-shedding that we are experiencing. It is only proper that they come out with a time-table.”