The Director of Operations of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has argued that only a ‘financial guru’ can help end the perennial power crisis, also known as Dumsor.
The Daily Graphic reported that dumsor was imminent in the coming days as the power sector is on the verge of losing 600 megawatts (MW) of generation by February 3, 2017 due to a complex web of financial obligations and other challenges confronting the national generator, the Volta River Authority (VRA).
The power supply deficit, the paper said is occurring mainly at the Aboadze power enclave in the Western Region.
The paper said further that the as of the close of last week, the VRA’s Takoradi Thermal Plant Stations (TAPCO 1&2) were already down with 330MW of power, as the contractor for its long-term service agreement (LTSA) refused to carry out major inspection to demand the payment of a $2 million debt owed it.
That aside, the Takoradi International Company (TICO) is also going through challenges, leading to the reduction of power output from 330MW to 155MW currently.
A third generator, T3, has not been operational for several years now.
This leaves only one plant, AMERI, which is designed to use only gas.
This means that from February 3, 2017 when the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant will not receive natural gas from the Jubilee Field for at least 15 days, that plant cannot also contribute any generation to the national electricity grid. And Nana Ofori Owusu commenting on this said the country come only come out of the crisis if it gets an energy minister who is also a financial guru and would be able to raise funds for the sector.
“In the energy sector, we have to look at it as a continuous something and realize that we need money to solve the problem…,” he said on Peace FM’s Kokrokoo Programme on Monday.
The Energy Minister, he said should use his knowledge in raising revenue to support the sector which has been in decline for some years now.
The crisis has led to the collapse of several factories and industries.
To Nana Ofori Owusu, the NPP would be allowed time to fix the crisis permanently if it is bold enough to expose the real crisis to the government.
“They should take advantage of the goodwill they have to tell Ghanaians the truth about the crisis and also draw the roadmap to solving it…,” he said.
In the ongoing vetting, the PPP Operations Director also urged the Ministerial nominees appearing before the vetting committee of Parliament to ‘dress well’ as according to him, Ken Ofori-Atta who appeared as the Finance Minister designate was too casual.
Minister designate for finance dressing to vetting committee was too casual “It wasn’t at the level of official wear for an interview…he must transition from personal things to personal service…we complained about Mahama’s dressing and he must also be advised to stop that,” he said.
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