Give us funding details, timelines to increase capacity of VRA — NPP demands
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has called on the government to provide the country with the financial details and timelines to increase the generating capacity of the Volta River Authority (VRA) by 1,000 megawatts (MW).
Advertisement
This is because Dr Kwabena Donkor, the Minister of Power, who addressed a press conference on the energy crisis last Monday, failed to provide details on how to achieve the 1,000MW generating capacity.
Addressing a press conference in Accra yesterday, the General Secretary of the NPP, Mr Kwabena Agyepong, asked: “How is the government going to fund such a project, especially so when it had not been captured in the 2015 budget presented to Parliament by the Minister of Finance, Mr Seth Terkper?”
He explained that the press conference was to share with Ghanaians the party’s deepest disappointment with the mismanagement of the power sector.
The country is currently shedding load of more than 500MW, a shortfall representing almost a third of the entire 2,000MW needed for distribution.
Currently, consumers are experiencing 24-hour blackout and 12-hour power supply.
Mismanagement
Mr Agyepong explained that the mismanagement of the energy sector had brought unbearable consequences on the economy and the lives of ordinary people.
He added that the energy crisis was taking a heavy toll on the socio-economic lives of Ghanaians.
According to him, the load shedding was destroying small and medium enterprises, while big companies were downsizing, thereby increasing job losses and unemployment.
The situation, he said, had negatively affected barbers, hairdressers, carpenters, tailors, students and almost every Ghanaian.
He said a few weeks ago, the fate of patients was left in the balance when power went off at the LEKMA Hospital at a time doctors were in the theatre working on patients.
Blood banks
He said blood banks at the hospitals were at risk due to “dumsor”, while the bodies of loved ones were decomposing in morgues across the country.
Mr Agyepong called on the government to provide pragmatic plans in fixing the unending power crisis in the shortest possible time.
Over the last six years, he said, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government had consistently demonstrated its inability to address the challenges facing the energy sector.
He said the NPP believed that the President Mahama-led government was being insincere and misleading Ghanaians.
Actions and inaction
Expressing the view that the actions and inaction of the government had weakened the financial capacity of the VRA to perform its core functions of generating adequate power for the country, Mr Agyepong said the government, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) and other institutions owed the VRA to the tune of GHc28 billion.
Dr Donkor, at the press conference last Monday, had said the government shared in the pain and agony of Ghanaians due to the erratic power supply situation in the country .
He gave an assurance that the government was putting in place adequate measures to bring stability to power supply by the end of the year.