The Electricity Company of Ghana says a major factor accounting for the frequent unannounced power outages is a direct effect of the ongoing power rationing exercise. Apart from the regular outages under the load management programme ECG customers have complained about the frequency of erratic unscheduled outages which they say have become a problem in recent times. Even though the ECG has always blamed the problem on faults, its Director of Operations said the frequent switching of the equipment was taking a toll. Ing. Andrew Tonto-Baffour told Joy News the ECG was also reeling from the crisis, explaining that switches that were usually turned on-and-off perhaps once in a year were now being tampered with virtually on a daily basis. He said the frequent switching render some of the switches ineffective, hence at times when consumers expect to get supplies, they are unable to do receive supplies because technicians would be working on them. “These are creating a lot of challenges for us in the system. So those faults are not anything of our making, we are also not happy about it, it is tasking us as well”.