The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has initiated a series of planned and emergency maintenance works to improve its infrastructure, with customers across the Tema and Ashanti region areas expected to experience power cuts today, Sunday, April 14.

The move comes as the power distributor struggles to stabilise the grid in the Ashanti West Region, where a string of severe network failures, including collapsed high-tension poles, plunged several major communities into darkness throughout Saturday.

The Tema Lockdown: Seven Hours of Upgrades

Residents and businesses in the Tema enclave are expected to experience a scheduled power cut from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The seven-hour blackout is part of a coordinated effort to modernise ageing infrastructure in rapidly developing zones.

Areas to be affected include Philipkope, Greenstone Junction, Perftech, Ataa Mensah, Teye Kwame, and the Afienya Youth Centre. The ECG has clarified that these residential and commercial zones are undergoing "essential infrastructure upgrades" to bolster long-term service reliability.

Emergency at the Race Course: Ashanti Region on Hold

Simultaneously, an eight-hour emergency operation is underway in the heart of Kumasi. Technicians are currently on-site at the Bantama Race Course Market, working against a 5:00 pm deadline to resolve "urgent network issues" within the bustling commercial hub.

The outage is described as a critical intervention to prevent a total collapse of the local grid.

The Saturday Fallout: Broken Poles and Feeder Faults

Sunday’s maintenance is compounded by the aftermath of Saturday’s destructive technical failures. In the Ashanti West Region, a catastrophic failure at Ohwimase Hilltop saw multiple high-tension poles snap, severing power to the Seed Company, Old Town, and surrounding neighbourhoods.

The chaos also extended to the following:

• The St. Hubert Feeder: Triggering outages in Lasab Junction, Odeneho Kwadaso, and Mount Olivet School.
• The Guinness 1 Feeder: Cutting supply to high-profile areas, including the Ahodwo Roundabout, True Vine Hotel, and parts of Nhiyaeso.

In official advisories released earlier, the power distributor expressed regret over the timing of these disruptions but maintained that the stability of the national grid was at stake.

The ECG assured affected customers that engineers were “working diligently to rectify all faults and restore supply as swiftly as possible".

The public notices further emphasised the necessity of these interventions:

“Engineers are working diligently to resolve all network issues while emphasising that the planned exercises are necessary to ensure the long-term robustness of the power network across the regions.”

The company extended its apologies to the thousands of customers impacted, acknowledging the "inconvenience caused by both the scheduled maintenance and the unplanned network faults".