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Prominent broadcaster Dr Randy Abbey has said that the reason for Ghana’s present unstable power supply, or dumsor, differs from that of the ones encountered during the administrations of John Dramani Mahama and John Agyekum Kufuor.
Speaking on Friday, April 26, 2024, on his Good Morning Ghana program, Dr Abbey explained that the country’s excessive reliance on hydropower for electricity generation was a major cause of the dumsor experienced during the Kufuor and Mahama eras and that the nation suffered whenever the waterbodies that powered the hydro went down.
“Unlike the 2007-2008 dumsor under Kufuor’s era and the 2013-2015 dumsor under JM; where under Kufuor, we had to bring those machines that were referred to as toy machines and then the JM era where our over-reliance on hydro exposed us once again, this is different.
“Our current situation is not an issue of capacity. It is not that Akosombo has dried up; Bui, water sources have dried up and we don’t have enough non-hydro to provide us electricity. It appears we learnt from those lessons and ramped up our non-hydro sources. So, we are not in the situation that we were in 2007-2008 and 2013-2014,” he said.
According to the host of Good Morning Ghana, the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government’s shortcomings are to blame for Ghana’s current state of chaos.
He emphasized that the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA) and other legislative funds established to meet the nation’s energy needs had been improperly used by the government.
He continued by saying that the government does not have the funds to purchase fuel for the power plants that were brought in to wean the nation off of its reliance on hydroelectricity, nor has it paid Independent Power Producers (IPPs), who supply the nation’s electricity needs.
“Now, this issue of energy sector indebtedness has led to ESLA. When this government took over, the ESLA debt was about GH¢9 billion. As we speak, we have collected GH¢33 billion from ESLA. The ESLA debt that we sought to pay off is now GH¢17 billion. So, we have not retired the debt. The debt has grown from GH¢9 billion to GH¢17 billion yet we have collected GH¢33 billion.
“We have misapplied the money for things other than what it was meant for. In addition to this, this government has introduced an Energy Sector Recovery Levy (ESRL) which has also raked in money yet as we speak today, the indebtedness to IPPs is at $1.9 billion. We are where we are because the government is not in a position to buy fuel to power these plants,” he said.
NKONKONSA.com
