A former Minister of Power, Dr Kwabena Donkor, says Ghana risks returning to the dreaded days of erratic power outages known as ‘dumsor’ in the next two years if government fails to address the issue of power generation capacity.
He contends that despite the fast-growing rate of power demand and consumption, there has not been a commensurate increase in supply capacity, putting the country at risk of a crisis.
Addressing the media, the Pru East legislator urged the government to immediately take steps towards bringing on stream additional power supply units to boost the country’s total capacity and adequately meet the increasing demand for power.
“This country is most likely to face load-shedding in the next two years if urgent steps are not taken from this moment to increase our power generation. Power consumption demand increases between 7% and 15% every year, and it takes a minimum of three years to bring on stream a new thermal plant. We seem to be sleepwalking into a situation of possible power outages as a result of supply limitation,” he said.
Ghana has recently enjoyed a fairly stable power supply, with isolated cases of outages in various parts of the country.
This has supported the government’s claim that it has fixed the problem of power outages in the country.
The government has already indicated that it is presently focused on reviewing all agreements signed with Independent Power Producers to ensure that it does not incur unnecessary expenses.