Government’s Misplaced Priorities Won’t End Dumsor Now – Experts

Kwame Jantuah and Kwadwo Poku, two power experts have predicted that the ongoing load-shedding will extend beyond 2015. The experts expressed lack of planning and misplaced priorities by managers of the energy sector to have translated into the current crisis, fearing that the worst is yet to come. “We are leaving
the problems to meet us before we plan for them. Dumsor, dumsor is not going to end by end of this year, it’s impossible,” said Kwame Jantuah.
Kwadwo Poku’s forecast is more specific:“We are going to have maybe six hours of light-off in a day. Dumsor as we know it, is going to take a long time”. They made these predictions on PM Express Thursday
on Joy News. It emerged Thursday that new technical problems at the power producer, Volta River Authority (VRA), will cripple the company’s ability to generate power, triggering fears that the power supply situation could grow from bad to worse. Kwadwo Poku has recommended for a long term solution to Ghana's power challenge. He had earlier called for a special committee to be set up to deal with the power challenges in the long term. The VRA plants in the Western region are currently only able to generate 150 megawatts out of a maximum of about 600megawatts because of technical faults. Due to the faults, the VRA is unable to process the optimum volume of gas which the Ghana Gas Company is ready to supply. Kwadwo Poku believes the challenges in the power sector are deep-rooted compounded by the fact that majority of Ghana’s current generation mix is thermal and unstable gas supplies from Nigeria. He said government’s priorities are also misplaced, spending money where it should not.