Former Power Minister, Dr. Kwabena Donkor has advised the public to disregard claims that any power outages experienced across the country are the result of ongoing maintenance works by the Electricity Company of Ghana.

According to Dr Kwabena Donkor, maintenance works alone is not enough to cause such disruptions in power supply.

His comments come in response to a notice from the Ghana Grid Company Ltd. (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), which said some of their customers were experiencing sporadic power interruptions.

The release also indicated that the Gas Processing Plant (GPP) of the Ghana National Gas Company Limited (GNGC) at Atuabo, had been operating at limited capacity.

(Click the video below to watch and listen to the Joy SMS during which Dr. Kwabena Donkor passed the comments.)

However, speaking on JoyFM’s Super Morning Show, Dr Donkor stated that the maintenance excuse was beside the point, as the main issue was a shortfall in the supply of power due to inadequate fuel.

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“If a plant is shut down for maintenance, that is why we have redundancy. Assuming it is the Ghana Gas processing plant that is shut down for maintenance, our thermal plant has dual fuel and therefore the inability to supply gas will not let the thermal plant not fire. They will be fired by light crude oil.

“So the maintenance argument does not make sense. Yes. Ghana Gas facility could be on shut down for maintenance. I am not disputing that possibility but Ghana Gas is only a fuel supplier. In fact they supply less than 50% of the fuel needs of the thermal sector,” he said.

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But Dr Donkor said there is currently a shortfall in generation of about 500 megawatts, which is also a result of inadequate fuel.

“We are unable to pay for fuel, we owe so much on fuel and that is critical. So the gymnastics do not take away the reality. The reality is that we are in a financial crunch in the power sector and arising out of that crunch, we are unable to meet our obligation," he added.