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Deputy Minister of Energy Andrew Egyapa Mercer has said that recent power outages are as a result of hitches with settling some debts the Government owes some of its partners in the power sector, stressing that dumsor – power cuts is mainly due to inadequate generation of power – is a thing of the past.
Speaking on CitiFM’s morning show, the Citi Breakfast Show Thursday, the Deputy Minister debunked the assertion that ‘dumsor’ had returned, insisting the outages are over since allocation for the payment of debts has been done.
“What has happened over the past few days is that some obligation owed by GNPC to WAPCo was an issue. WAPCo threatened. GNPC [representing the Government] made some initial payments. It wasn’t satisfactory. So we requested the Ministry of Finance to top up. We had to go through some approval processes…As of yesterday evening the Ministry of Finance had approved a sum of 10 million to pay for a part of that debt. So that was the hiccup that we encountered that led to the power outages we encountered in the past few days. But that has been resolved,” he explained.
He added that the transmitter of natural gas, the West African Gas Pipeline Company Limited ( WAPCo) has restored the supply of gas to some of its power plants for the generation of power.
“Yesterday, WAPCo said it was going to restore and that was accordingly made from the West to the East, to power plants in the East. And so there is no ‘dumsor’ to warrant the shedding,” he emphasised.
Ghanaians have been lamenting the return of dumsor in some parts of the country, calling the Government to resolve it or come up with a timetable of load shedding to guide them. But the Government insists dumsor has not returned.
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