The Central Regional Minister, Nana Ato Arthur has commended officials of the Volta River Authority in Cape Coast for completing routine maintenance of its sub-station ahead of schedule. The exercise which involved the maintenance of the VRA’s main transformer in the region and was begun in the first week of August was to have taken between four and six weeks of completion but rather took three weeks and five days of completion. It resulted in an additional load - shedding exercise in the Cape Coast municipality and some other parts of the region, alongside the national exercise. When the exercise began, some sections of the public had had the notion that it had “political undertones” and the Minister together with VRA and ECG officials had to summon the press to explain the importance of the exercise, during which the ECG was only able to distribute 9 instead of 27 megawatts of power needed for the region. The Regional Director of the ECG, Alhaji Dauda Jangu Alhassan however told the Minister and the press that the national load shedding exercise would be continued. On the issue as to whether the ECG would compensate residents whose appliances got destroyed as a result of power fluctuations associated with the load shedding, he observed that most houses had not replaced their electrical installations and wirings for more than 50 years and need to do so. Source: GNA