The Volta River Authority and the Electricity Company of Ghana say they will consider concerns raised by the Trades Union Congress and the Ghana Employers Association about the new load-shedding timetable at the next review in two weeks.

The new timetable, which took effect from Wednesday, denies customer groups’ power for 12 hours once during the day and once during the night within a four-day cycle.

However, the TUC and the employers association say power outages during the day do not favour businesses as employees will be rendered redundant and might have to be laid off.

Officials at the VRA and ECG say the concerns have been noted and would be meeting with the TUC and Employers Association to get a better understanding of the issues after which a response will be communicated on Monday.

Meanwhile the continued load shedding is driving more consumers onto the generator market, raising both market and prices.

Retailers in Accra say demand for generators has increased since the load shedding began last year however sales have not been as brisk as expected they expected. This is because most people rather prefer to window shop.

A retailer, Issah told Joy News he sells about five generators a day and many of his clients are small business operators, who say without a supplementary power – their companies will collapse. They are willing to part with between 1.2 million cedis for a 1.1KV generator and 250 million cedis for a 6.1KV generator.