The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is constructing 30 primary substations nationwide to improve electricity supply. The $450-million project is internally-funded with additional resources from the country's development partners. This will bring the total number of power sub-stations in the country to 109. At a meeting organised by the Public Utility Regulatory Commission(PURC) to ascertain from the ECG the reasons for recent power outages in parts of the country, the Director of Customer Services of the ECG, Dr Nicholas Kwabena Smart-Yeboah, attributed the situation to technical problems beyond the control of the company. He said, for instance, that in Tema, a technical fault at one of their sub-stations resulted in the loss of two power transformers, which brought about the recent power outages in parts of Tema and East Legon. He said in the case of Dansoman, a suburb of Accra, engineers of the company encountered serious opposition from some of the inhabitants in their efforts to address the situation. Mr Smart-Yeboah attributed the behaviour of the people partly to partisan politics and the rest to petty squabbles and appealed to them to close their ranks for the improvement of electricity supply to benefit every citizen of the country. Touching on the power outages in Kasoa, he said the lines from Winneba were being extended to support the existing ones to stem the situation. He further explained that most of these technical faults occurred unannounced but emphasised that as soon as such problems emerged, engineers of the company were at hand to quickly fix them. Mr Smart-Yeboah said because of these challenges and the determination to ensure uninterrupted power supply, the company started the construction of the substations nationwide. He said of the 30 substations, 15 would be in Accra, four in Kumasi, two in the Western Region, four in the Central Region and one in the Eastern Region. The Executive Secretary of the PURC, Mr Stephen Adu, urged the ECG to endeavour to quickly inform the public as soon as such situations occurred. He entreated them to also communicate any schedule of maintainance works that would result in power outages to the affected areas ahead of time and reminded them of the Legislative Instrument empowering the Commission to sanction any utility provider which would fail in its responsibilities. Source: Daily Graphic