Former Minister of Energy is insisting the erstwhile Mahama administration did not end erratic power supply popularly known as ‘dumsor.’
Boakye Agyarko explained that the problem was still there a year after the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) exited office.
“In 2016, we had 320 hours of load shedding and in 2017, there were 41 hours of load shedding so it cannot be true the NDC ended ‘dumsor’,” he said in an interview on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme Thursday.
His comment was in reaction to former President John Mahama’s claim that he ended ‘dumsor’ before exiting office in 2016.
He stated that but for the many power plants he bought to stablise the situation, the country would have still been in power crisis.
Mr Mahama, who is also the presidential candidate of the NDC, challenged President Nana Akufo-Addo to show proof that his government ended ‘dumsor.’
In response, the former Energy Minister said the electricity supply plan in 2016 published by the Energy Commission exposes the hypocrisy of Mr Mahama and the NDC.
He indicated that the NDC government did Ghana a great disservice by signing many power purchasing agreements.
Mr Agyarko said the Mahama government signed over 30 power purchase agreements which added 11,000 megawatts of power when Ghana’s demand was less than 3,000 megawatts.
The results of this, he stated, is that “Ghana paid over 300 million dollars to Independent Power Producers for excess capacity of power we didn’t need.”
The former Energy Minister maintained that the New Patriotic Party was able to end ‘dumsor’ due to prudent management of the sector.
“The fact that you add capacity does not mean you are generating power; we ended ‘dumsor’ due to good planning,” Mr Agyarko stressed.