Greater Accra Regional Organiser of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Anthony Nukpenu, has expressed concern over the widespread power outages affecting parts of the Greater Accra Region, describing the situation as worrying and unproductive.
Speaking in an interview on Adom FM’s morning show Dwaso Nsem, he said he personally drove through several affected areas to assess the situation.
“I took the pain yesterday and drove along certain routes, and I was even shy. If that is the level and span of coverage of how citizens are without electricity for hours, then it is very worrying,” he said.
According to him, the scale of the outages in parts of Greater Accra is unacceptable.
“It is not good that you will get a catchment area like almost half of Greater Accra where people don’t have lights. I don’t think it is productive,” he stated.
Mr. Nukpenu said the development made him sad from the previous night into the following morning.
“It made me very sad from last night until this morning,” he added.
He further disclosed that he contacted some senior officials of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), who briefed him on the current challenges facing the power distributor.
“I even called some of the senior men in ECG and they also told me their side of what the challenge is. Efforts are being made, but there are certain challenges that ECG is currently working to resolve,” he said.
According to him, Ghana currently has enough power generation capacity, and the main issue lies within transmission and distribution systems.
“We don’t have a generation problem. There is enough power to be distributed. The problem is between the transmitter and the distributor,” he explained.
He noted that some of the challenges include faulty transformer supply points and aging electricity lines that are more than 40 to 50 years old and require replacement.
“These are issues of transformer supply points and faulty lines that need to be changed, some of which are over 40 to 50 years old,” he stated.
Mr. Nukpenu questioned the maintenance culture within the relevant institutions.
“Someone will ask, all these years, what the maintenance units of these institutions have really been doing,” he remarked.
His comments come in response to a series of significant events that have raised concerns about the stability and management of the country’s power supply, including the recent fire at the Akosombo Power Control Centre and a leadership shake-up within the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in the Ashanti Region.
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