Let’s fix power problem now!

The power situation in the country is getting out of hand. This is making people angry and that made some irritated residents of certain suburbs of Accra go on the rampage, blocking roads and destroying property owned by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

We consider this very unfortunate but what we also consider to be equally unfortunate is the decision of Parliament to investigate the power outage that hit them last Thursday.

All this while that Ghanaians have been experiencing the ‘dumsor-dumsor’, Parliament did not order investigations into the load-shedding exercise until it happened to them and our Members of Parliament (MPs) started asking questions.

We do not begrudge them. It is part of their oversight responsibility but all this while, we had expected them to empathise with the people.

We hope that the ‘dumsor-dumsor’ or ‘adum-adum-adum’ that the MPs experienced would spur them on to take steps to get the power situation to normalcy.

We cannot end the year with this debilitating load-shedding exercise that has brought businesses to their knees.

We have said time and again that the exercise has collapsed many businesses but because the statistics are not known to us, we are not moved by the harm it is doing to our economy.

Many promises had been made in the past but very little action has been taken to deal with the situation.

It is our expectation that this time around, efforts would be made to fix the power crisis once and for all so that individuals and business owners can plan.

We know investment in electricity generation will not happen overnight but it is our fervent desire that the government will set its ‘mind’ on the task and marshal the requisite resources to deal with it permanently.

In doing so, we must examine some of the factors that have predisposed us to the quagmire we find ourselves in.

The ECG’s inability to fully recover debts owed it has been a major factor and the government, which owes the ECG several millions of cedis could not have furthered the cause of the ECG.

The internal problems of the ECG itself, evident in the massive illegal connections involving staff of the company and other illegal connections by some segments of the public, have played no small role in the present predicament.

Also, the government’s alleged indebtedness to gas suppliers, which has occasioned the erratic supply of the commodity, is to blame.

On various occasions, the stakeholders in the power generation and distribution process have attributed load-shedding to maintenance works undertaken on the power-generating machines.

While we do not discount the need for regular maintenance, we believe that a system should be put in place to mitigate the effects of these scheduled maintenance regimes in order to lessen the fallouts that are usually detrimental to industry.

Our quest to attract and retain foreign investors is threatened if the status quo regarding our power troubles is not addressed permanently and comprehensively.

Efforts at winning the confidence of investors will not produce effective results if the gloomy picture of the power situation in the country persists.

The Daily Graphic calls for decisive action now to make ‘dumsor-dumsor’ a thing of the past.