Energy Minister John Abdulai Jinapor has rebuked the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), questioning why lights continue to go off every time it rains.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Wednesday, April 30, Jinapor didn’t hold back. “Firstly, I do not see why the lights always go off when it rains. It makes no sense to me,” he said, clearly frustrated.
He revealed he had a meeting scheduled with ECG management the same day at 1:30 pm to demand answers.
“The ECG MD and his team tried to explain, but I said, you must stretch yourself beyond what you are doing now. We must get to a level where, when it rains, the lights will stay on. I cannot accept that when it rains, 21 feeders go off. We must find a solution.”
Jinapor said the problem lies not just in outdated infrastructure, but also in poor responsiveness and communication. “Yesterday, when it rained, about 21 feeders went off,” he recounted.
“And I asked, and they said, the equipment and the machinery are so obsolete, that is what we’ve inherited. We now have to ensure that we upgrade it and make it more robust, more resilient, so that it can serve the people.”
But he insisted that blaming obsolete equipment is not enough.
“The other thing, too, is a human factor,” he said. “Yes, this is what you’ve inherited. You have some plans over the period, but immediately, when the lights go out, what is the response time? Immediately, it goes off, people must move in.”
He described complaints from Ghanaians who go days without electricity and get no help. “Sometimes you hear people saying that we’ve been off for one day, two days, and nobody has come. That is unacceptable. It will stop.”
The minister stressed that the government is acting with urgency. “It’s been tough, it’s been difficult,” he admitted.
“It’s going to take very difficult decisions, and we’ve started implementing some decisions.”
John Jinapor explained that major improvements take time.
“The only thing about the energy sector is that it has a long gestation period. For instance, we’ve realised that a lot of the lines are bad. A lot of the transformers are obsolete. Now, if you want to change transformers, it takes time.
“Secondly, because of the current energy architecture, if I want to change your transformer, your lights have to go off before I change it. And so naturally, people will even get angry when the lights go off.”
He also took issue with how poorly ECG communicates with the public.
“I went to a shop to buy something about two months ago, and the woman said the light had been off since 11 in the morning. And then when she called the control centre, they said they were sending technical people.”
But when Jinapor followed up, he got a different story.
“Then I called the MD, who said, Oh, they’ve announced that we’re going to do some routine work, so they would have finished by 5 pm.”
He said the woman at the ECG office should have been told the right thing.
“That lady would have been told, please don’t worry, we are doing something good to make the lines better. It will help you in the long run, so please bear with us. By 5 pm, you’ll be back online.”
“But when you tell the customer that the men are coming to fix it and they are not coming, it creates a problem.”
He said the ministry is working on all fronts.
“We are putting in place all the necessary mechanisms to ensure that the response time is very quick,” he said.
“We are dealing with short-term measures, the medium-term measures, and then some long-term measures to stabilise the grid.”
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