The Ranking Member of the Energy Committee of Parliament, John Jinapor, has lashed out at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for misinforming the public over the recent surge in intermittent power outages.
In a statement on March 12, ECG explained that it was upgrading some of its facilities and installing new ones to ensure a more stable electricity supply.
It also said that the intermittent power outages have been caused by maintenance issues and, in some cases, an overload on their transformers, as well as some localized underground cable faults, among others.
These outages are expected to occur during the peak load period between 7 pm and 11 pm.
However, Mr Jinapor believes the widespread load shedding is a result of financial issues and not technical glitches from overloaded and faulty transformers as claimed by the ECG.
“We have been monitoring the situation and just yesterday, we laid hands on the PURC’s cash waterfall mechanism Validation Report for January 2024.
“I can confidently but sadly confirm to you that the current load shedding is not technical, it is financial. It is due to mismanagement.”
Mr. Jinapor further characterized the situation as a gross abuse of the cash waterfall mechanism and mismanagement of funds, challenging the narrative put forth by the ECG.
On March 5, 2024, a former Energy Minister under the John Mahama administration, Emmanuel Armah Kofi-Buah, also said the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was a major contributor to the country’s power sector challenges.
He said ECG had become the weakest link in the energy sector value chain.
