President John Dramani Mahama has commended engineers at the Volta River Authority (VRA) and Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) for their swift intervention to restore power generation at the Akosombo plant after a fire incident damaged critical control units at the switchyard.

During an inspection visit to the facility, President Mahama praised the technical expertise and resilience of the engineers of both, who are working to restore the two remaining control units affected by last week’s fire.

He expressed confidence in the capacity of the state-owned utility, describing it as one of Ghana’s best-managed institutions.

“You work hard, but it’s not surprising because VRA has been one of the best-organised state-owned enterprises. So I’m not surprised that you have the kind of quality of human resources to be able to ameliorate what happened,” he said.

President Mahama added that he was encouraged by reports that engineers were already making progress in restoring operations at the plant.

“So I want to thank you for the sacrifice. This is an act of God. I mean, who would have expected that the control room would develop this kind of fire?” he noted.

The President further suggested that the incident, though unfortunate, presents an opportunity to modernise infrastructure at the Akosombo facility, some parts of which date back to 1964.

“But of course, I hear it’s been there since 1964. So they say that adversity is opportunity. Because now that this adversity has happened, it allows us to replace it with a more modern control room that will serve this Akosombo plant and let it work for more generations yet unborn,” he said.

The fire, which occurred last week, damaged parts of the switchyard control system, prompting urgent repair works by VRA engineers to stabilise power generation.

President Mahama revealed that four turbines have already been restored, with optimism that the remaining two will soon be back online.

“You have four of the turbines back on, and you’re working another miracle, and I’ll get good news soon with the remaining two turbines also coming back on,” he said.

He also acknowledged the role of the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), describing both institutions as key pillars of Ghana’s power sector.

“VRA and GRIDCo, both of you, you are among the foremost twins of the same mother,” he said.

The President assured the institutions of continued government support as restoration efforts continue, amid concerns about stability in power supply following the incident.