President John Dramani Mahama has stated that the recent power outages in parts of Ghana are not a recurrence of the “dumsor” power crisis, but rather a necessary measure to increase supply.
President Mahama, speaking while inspecting new transformers obtained for the Northern Electricity Distribution Company Limited (NEDCo), stated that the government had purchased 2,500 transformers to replace aging equipment around the country.
“The outages you are facing are not dumsor,” he said. “It is to enable you to get better quality and stable power.”
Ghana’s electrification initiatives date back to the National Electrification Program’s inception in the 1980s, according to the president.
“At that time, the population of Ghana was much smaller than it is today — I think some 19 million or 18 million; today we’re 33 million,” he said.
“And it means that all our communities are expanding.”
He cited the case of a transformer in Nungua, Lashibi, which he said was 22 years old.
“You can imagine that the transformer was installed 22 years ago. And since then, the community has expanded beyond the capacity of the transformer; that’s why you have the lights being very unstable,” President Mahama said.
He added that for years, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and NEDCo had not carried out a “mass replacement of transformers to upgrade the power of the transformers to be able to meet the growing demand in the communities”.
Source:Mybrytfmonline.com/Joseph Asare
