Even as power outages continue to disrupt homes and businesses across Ghana, former Member of Parliament for Ayensuano, Samuel Ayeh-Paye, has maintained that the country is not experiencing a reboot of the dreaded ‘dumsor’ era of severe power crisis.
Ayeh-Paye’s statement comes amid widespread calls from affected sectors for the government to release a load-shedding timetable to manage the erratic power supply situation.
The former legislator echoed the stance of Energy Minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh, who last month vehemently denied the existence of ‘dumsor’ and challenged advocates of load-shedding to produce their own timetables.
According to Ayeh-Paye, Ghana currently has sufficient installed capacity to meet power demand but is grappling with technical challenges impeding full utilization of that capacity.
“We are having some power outages and according to the power agencies, they are saying that there is no ‘dumsor’ but technical challenges. ‘Dumsor’ happens when you don’t have enough power to produce or supply the exact peak demand that we need,” he explained.
“As we speak, our peak production is around 3,600 megawatts, and what we get is a little below that and we have a shortfall, and what they [the power agencies] are saying is that the shortfall is not as a result of not having an installed capacity. The calculation is having about 5,000 plus installed capacity.”
Ayeh-Paye further dismissed suggestions that the outages are due to financial constraints in procuring fuel for power plants or paying independent power producers.
He stated, “What the [Energy] Ministry is telling us is that the issue is not about us not having money to buy fuel, the issue is about some of the plants being under maintenance and repairs and the ECG is also telling us that they have challenges with their transformers.”
Despite the assurances, the intermittent disruptions in power supply have sparked concerns among businesses and residents who experienced the crippling ‘dumsor’ crisis between 2012 and 2016.