A former Energy Minister under the John Mahama administration, Emmanuel Armah Kofi-Buah, has singled out the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) as being a major contributor to the country’s power sector challenges.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express on Monday, March 4, the Ellembele MP categorically stated that ECG was the weakest link in the energy sector value chain. The chain mainly comprises production, transmission and distribution.

In recent times, Ghanaians have experienced unstable power supply in parts of the country, but the Electricity Company of Ghana - the national power distributor, has said the company is not undertaking any load shedding that requires a timetable.

But many power consumers, are of the view that the country was experiencing the severe power outages era christened “dumsor” some years ago.

ECG has explained that the intermittent power outages have largely been caused by major maintenance issues and in some cases an overload on their transformers, as well as some localized underground cable faults among others.

Responding to a question about the power situation in the country on PM Express, the former Energy Minister under John Mahama, Armah Kofi-Buah, said, “ECG is the weakest link in the value chain. It’s the biggest headache in the energy sector and it’s a fact.”

If you recall, what causes dumsor [power outages] is not always one thing. It could be a generational shortfall, the issue of fuel and financial challenges in getting some of these things done. As we speak, the reason we don’t have a generational shortfall and say that we don’t have dumsor [power outages] in terms of the generational shortfall, is that the MD of ECG rushes to buy heavy fuel oil for AKSA. The only reason why AKSA is operating is that ECG bought AKSA heavy fuel oil to operate. Sometimes amid a crisis we rush, and there are bigger issues that are confronting us” he argued.

The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Mr Samuel Dubik Mahama, who was also on the show, attributed the recent power cuts to maintenance issues.
According to him, the company only distributes what is made available to them.

“What we are experiencing now is caused by a lot of overload. A lot of transformers have a lot of customers on them more than what we have prescribed. Apart from underground cable faults within some localities, some of the power plants also undergo maintenance.”

He gave the assurance that the recent challenges that caused the outages have been resolved.