By
William Yaw Owusu
Wednesday,
December 3, 2014
President John Dramani Mahama has pledged not to
make ‘promises’ to Ghanaians again.
His comment comes in the wake of government’s
failure to solve the energy crisis that continues to negatively affect a lot of
businesses.
Flashback
In his State of the Nation Address early this year
after it appeared the power outage, known as dumsor – dumsor had subsided,
President Mahama said Ghanaians had ‘short memories’ for not recollecting the
efforts by his NDC government to address the problems.
However, less than one year after the statement, the
energy crisis has worsened and there have been widespread criticism of the
government’s handling of the situation.
The president had promised during IEA presidential
debate in 2012 ahead of the election that load shedding was going to be a thing
of the past by the end of 2013, claiming that 820megamatts would be added to
the generation mix.
But two years after the pledge, load shedding has
reached an alarming stage with unpredicted interruptions causing havoc to homes
and industries.
Speaking on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana hosted by
Paul Adom-Otchere last Thursday, President Mahama said, “I don’t think anybody
is to blame,” adding he has learnt lessons not to make promises again.
“We should all take lessons from some of these
things. We should have some understanding of what technically we are going
into. I don’t think anybody is to blame. If is there it is providing power and
we should use it for what its role is going to be.
Bui capacity
“We had factored Bui as part of the addition to our
generation and that is why one would have made some of the promises that we
made that 400megawatts was coming to add up to what we had in place.
Unfortunately because of the nature of the reservoir we cannot run Bui at full
capacity. So Bui has become what we call a peaking plant. So we can run one or
two units and the time the peak load comes in then you kick in the third unit
but you must quickly shut down after peak load in order that you maintain
reservoir limit.”
Challenges
He said “energy sector presents most challenges to
all Presidents who have come and gone. It is an issue that takes a lot of my
time as President. We need to take a comprehensive look at our energy sector.
We should fashion sustainable solution to it.”
He said Ghana’s demand for energy had been ‘growing’
as a result of the acceleration in the growth of the economy, adding “and so we
must plan in terms of the generation that we are putting in.”
Energy expectation
“The estimate is that we must build a 220megawatts
of energy every year continuously over the next 10 years to be able to keep up
with the growth in demand that Ghana is experiencing. Sometimes some of the
elements are out of our control.”
“At the time that I said what I said it was based on
receiving sufficient supply from the West African Gas Pipeline but there was a
disruption in the pipeline. In the Tema enclave, we have several gas plants
there. A certain percentage of those plants run only on gas and so if there is
no gas you cannot import crude oil to run those plants. As a result we have a
gap in generation averagely of about 200 to 300 megawatts.”
He said “we have paid much attention to bringing our
own gas on stream. Our long delayed Atuabo Ghana Gas Plant is going through
commissioning and testing and we have started to receive some gas in Aboadze.”
ECG Boss
He said it was wrong for anybody to suggest that the
ECG boss had been sacked, saying “We have a new ministry and he has been
assigned to that ministry in a capacity that will be useful to the country.
“ECG staff should concentrate on how to build a
team. It is about teamwork. It should not be about personalities. He is still
in the power sector. He is going to play a role there. ECG workers should calm
down and continue to do their work. We appreciate the role they are playing.”
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