Tamale residents fear possible return of dumsor as unexplained power outages intensify

Correspondence from the Northern Region

Residents of Tamale have urged the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) of the Volta River Authority (VRA) to explain the recent power outages that have plunged the city and its surroundings.

The city and its surroundings have experienced long power interruptions in the past two months with the power outages intensifying in the latter part of September and early October.

Residents fear the power outages are a gradual return of ‘dumsor’, a Ghanaian parlance which refers to intermittent power outages and load shedding of electricity.

Some residents who shared their frustrations with GhanaWeb in Tamale on Friday, October 6, 2023, appealed to NEDCo to announce a load-shedding programme if the situation is going to persist.

This they said would help them plan, adjust and brace themselves for the power cuts.

“We don’t understand what is happening. Are we going back to the era of dumsor? They should tell us so that we’ll know how to brace this,” Ibrahim Ramatu, a business operator in Tamale said.

“These days, we get hours of interruptions almost on a daily basis. This is affecting our businesses and it is surprising they don’t even give us any reason or even prior notice before taking the lights,” a frustrated Ramatu said.

Abdul Aziz, another resident who lives at Kalpohin in Tamale said “These days, in a week, we can sleep in darkness for two to three days and then still experience the outages during the day.

“If the power keeps going off like this, it is better for NEDCo to announce a dumsor schedule, so that we know when we can have stable power, not this kind of unexpected and unexplained cuts.”

“The power can go off at any time. When it is during the day, you at least know that it may come back but when it goes off at night, you just know you have to sleep in darkness,” Alhassan Basit, another resident told GhanaWeb.

On Friday night, many parts of the city were plunged into total darkness and as of Saturday morning, it had not returned. This was the second time within the first week of October that several parts of the city, including Gumani, Kalpohin, SSNIT Flats, Kukuo, among others were sleeping in darkness.

In August, the Tamale Teaching Hospital had said that the power interruptions were gravely affecting their operations.

The hospital had to shut down one of its CT scan machines after the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system of the machine was damaged during a power outage.

One of its power generation plants serving the Obstetrics and Gynecological Units was also damaged by the outages, leading to a complete shutdown of the plant. This led to frequent power outages in these important units of the hospital.

The power distribution company has offered very little explanation for the power cuts, it usually blames the cuts on technical challenges and GRIDCO, the power generator for the unstable supply of power to the city.