The Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor has dismissed claims by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) that Ghana may suffer another load shedding crisis in 2017 if the governing National Democratic Congress is given a second term.
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We have sufficient power, dumsor not imminent - Jinapor
Policy advisor of the NPP said “many businesses and residential consumers of electricity are justifiably afraid that ‘dumsor’ will come back if the NDC is retained in power”.
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According to him, Ghana has sufficient power than it even requires.
Mr Boakye Agyarko, policy advisor of the NPP in a press conference on Wednesday said “the NDC has not demonstrated any measure of control in addressing the challenge”.
He said: “many businesses and residential consumers of electricity are justifiably afraid that ‘dumsor’ will come back if the NDC is retained in power”.
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According to him, “Gas supply from Nigeria stopped in June this year and may not be resumed soon due to government’s failure to pay outstanding debts in excess of US $160million.”
“Gas supply from Jubilee Field will also stop at the FPSO and it is expected to be shut down for repairs for the period between three to six months. With these developments, Asogli and AMERI will not be able to generate power.
“We are, therefore, estimating that Ghana will experience a shortage of up to 700 megawatts of power early next year, which may be dragged lower as Akosombo [Dam] may be drafted in spite of the lower water level,” he said.
But Mr Jinapor has insisted that the NPP might be hallucinating for making such claims.
“As I speak to you, some of our plants have been shut down because of excess capacity. KTPP is down, TT1PP is down, the Sonnet plant is down, not due to fault but due to strategic reasons. We do export power to Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso; we do export power through NEDCO to Ivory Coast.”
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“...There is no agreement that states that we are going to give out gas to the Chinese. We have consistently stated that we believe in a gas fired thermal system and so as much as possible we intend using our gas resources to fire our thermal plants because that is cheaper, efficient and that is part of our plans. So that cannot be true. I listened to him this afternoon and he claimed that VRA supply 75% of our power needs, that is not true he claimed that the dam is at an all-time low, that is not true, he claimed that crude oil is far expensive compared to their time in terms of the premium, that is not true,” he told Accra-based Citi FM.
He said under the NDC administration, “we have added more capacity than the NPP. And it is obvious; it is undisputable...some of the challenges we went through, it is because the NPP didn’t take some of the challenges we have taken today. We had to take very difficult, bold steps in order to stabilise the power situation. And so we have the track record and given the opportunity, we will certainly do better than the NPP.”
“I want to assure Ghanaians that they should remain confident, they should remain calm, they should remain focused. There is no cause for panic; we have the situation under control and we shall deal with it going forward,” he added.
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