Ghana's Power Minister - 'I promised to end load shedding, not ‘localised outages’

Dr. Kwabena Donkor, Ghana's Power Minister, has appeared before the Government Assurances Committee in Parliament to set the record straight after comments he recently made to clarify his promise to end the country’s power crisis.
Dr. Donkor, when he was appointed by President Mahama, announced that he would resign if the power crisis persisted after 2015 and has reiterated that promise on different occasions. However, the Minister recently sought to clarify his promise when answering questions posed to him by pressure group Occupy Ghana, stating that his promises was to end the load shedding programme and not power outages entirely.

Ghanaians who were skeptical of Dr. Donkor’s promise were up in arms following his comments. According to them, the Minister is only making excuses to absolve himself of any blame and get out of resigning should the power crisis not end entirely at the end of the year, a claim Dr. Donkor dismissed on Wednesday. “I have been at pains at very places to make a critical distinction that the new lexicon, dumsor does not reflect. Load shedding arises out of generation deficit. In ordinary language we would say power rationing, because we don’t have enough. That is what I promised on the floor of the House to work towards its cessation,” Dr. Donkor said.

According to the power minister, while his ministry was working towards ending the load shedding programme, it would not be possible to curtail outages as a result of faulty transmitters or activities of criminals who steal the copper cables.