The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, John Abdulai Jinapor has stated that the current power outages being experienced in parts of the country are not due to faulty transformers but financial challenges.

According to Mr Jinapor, ECG is spreading false information by claiming that they are repairing transformers but the reality is that there is a deficit in generation.

Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday, March 12, he said “A deficit in generation means that the generation capacity is not able to meet the demand and because of that there has to be what they call load shedding popularly known as 'dumsor'. This has been consistent. It has been going on for about two months.”

Mr Jinapor stated that the ECG is refusing to admit the truth that there is a generation challenge which is largely on account of the inability of the government to support ECG in procuring fuel.

He stated that Ghana is experiencing 'dumsor' because of inadequate fuel to fire the thermal plants.

Mr Jinapor stated that on March 11, ECG was able to generate only 3000 megawatts instead of 3,543 megawatts which indicates there was a shortage of 500.

Read also: There may be power outages at peak periods – ECG explains why

“This is from the systems control room. We also have people who are honest, who are patriotic and will provide us with information.”

Mr Jinapor disclosed that Ghana has reduced its power export to Cote d'Ivoire, CEB (Togo), and Sonabel (Burkina Faso), which will negatively impact the country's foreign exchange.

“We are even losing that market. That’s a market that gives us foreign exchange so if this happens and ECG was shedding 450 megawatts, this has nothing to do with obsolete transformers."

Transformers do not get overloaded overnight, it builds up. So what is ECG’s maintenance culture? What is their investment culture? That even tells you that they are not doing the right thing.”

“Because you can’t have the whole of Ghana suddenly all our transformers getting overloaded overnight. It’s never the case. It takes time. It builds up and as it builds up, you put in more transformers, you upgrade the transformers so that you can hold the system,” he said

Mr Jinapor has debunked ECG's claim that maintenance works are being carried out at night.

According to him, ECG's assertion is false, as the company typically conducts routine maintenance during the afternoon, not at night.

“It’s a management issue, political interference and misuse of the revenues accruing. It’s not as if revenues are not accruing. As you can see, almost a billion collection a month can do a lot but when you misapply over 500 million, certainly there will be a huge debt.

“I think they should get back to the cash waterfall mechanism, allow PURC to function so that the losses will be reduced to the barest minimum,” he said.