The Member of Parliament for Bongo Constituency, Edward Bawa, has slammed the ongoing dispute between the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) as unwarranted.
Ghana has been grappling with intermittent power supply issues, commonly referred to as ‘dumsor,’ for several months.
The conflict between ECG and GRIDCo revolves around these power interruptions, with ECG the blaming GRIDCo for the development.
GRIDCo has expressed concerns about ECG’s failure to provide a load-shedding timetable during these outages.
In a letter addressed to the Energy Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, dated March 28, GRIDCo emphasized ECG’s non-compliance with the load-shedding management instructions issued by the National System Control Center (NSCC).
But the Bongo MP in an interview on Citi TV said the confusion is an attestation that, some individuals don’t understand how things work in the energy sector.
Mr. Bawa questioned the competency of certain individuals in the energy sector, stating, “It’s unnecessary rivalry, and it’s just a question of sometimes people do not seem to understand how the system works.”
He criticized ECG for not adhering to GRIDCo’s power distribution guidelines.
“I’m fully in support of what GRIDCo is doing, on a daily basis, they compare the supply and demand. If the supply is lower than the demand, there will be a system shutdown, they have to match.”
“If GRIDCo thinks that they are not matching and that the demand outstrips the supply, they will then tell all the distributors that I know that in our statistics, your load is this between this period and that period of time, so share this amount of power,” he said.
Mr. Bawa expressed confusion over ECG’s failure to publish a timetable for customers, attributing its reluctance to a political decision by the government.
“GRIDCo said ECG publish a time schedule, we have a crisis, if you are going to put people off, be equitable in that. But if you don’t do that, and as a system, I will not know that you have lights off yesterday or not? GRIDCo is an emergency situation.”
“That is political, the moment ECG publishes a timetable, it’s an official declaration of ‘dumsor,’ that is the word the NPP government doesn’t want to go.”
Edward Bawa suggested that, the conflict between the two entities would end if they collaborated effectively.
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