The Member of Parliament for Bongo Constituency, Edward Bawa, has provided insights into measures taken by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to tackle the persistent power outages in Ghana.
Mr. Bawa highlighted the concerted efforts by the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama administration to address the power crisis.
Speaking in an interview on Citi TV on Tuesday, April 16, he stressed that the Mahama-led government prioritised resolving the issue and made substantial investments in the energy sector to mitigate the effects of the power outages.
The Mahama administration encountered significant criticism when Ghana experienced a period of power crisis, known as “dumsor,” during its tenure.
Despite the challenges, some NDC leaders have asserted that they managed to resolve the power crisis before the end of their term.
Mr. Bawa reiterated that the Mahama government successfully tackled the root causes of the power outages during its tenure.
He said specific issues such as generation capacity, fuel security, and unpaid accumulated legacy debts were effectively addressed by the government in 2015.
According to him, these measures implemented by the former president aimed to ensure a stable and reliable supply of electricity to meet the needs of the Ghanaian population.
“Essentially, by the close of 2015, the major issues that had to do with the power sector had been dealt with. When the NDC came, obviously these problems were still there waiting to strike again. Unfortunately, it reared its head in 2013, when we had a problem with the breached pipeline and that told us that we needed to do something about our fuel security properly. By the close of 2015, we had procured enough generation power to be able to deal with the immediate cause of “dumsor”.
“Generation was the immediate issue, that part by the close of 2015, actually had been dealt with. There was also a financial aspect of it which was dealt with, particularly just the end of 2015 and 2016. We were dealing with the debts and then by the close of 2015, we had also dealt with the fuel security issue because we had then brought on board Atuabo Gas Plant that was going to utilize our gas,” he said.
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