Andrew Agyapa Mercer, the Deputy Minister for Energy has allayed the fears of Ghanaians on the return of power cuts.
He said the recent power cuts, which is commonly known as ‘dumsor’, has been resolved.
In an interview with Bernard Avle on Citi FM, Mr. Mercer stated that the Ministry of Finance had, on January 10, 2024, disbursed $10 million to the West African Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAPCo) for gas supply, reinforcing the commitment to uninterrupted power supply.
“What has happened over the past few days is that some obligation owed by GNPC to WAPCo was an issue. WAPCo threatened [and] GNPC made some initial payments [but] it wasn’t satisfactory. We requested the Ministry of Finance to top up. We had to go through some approval processes.
“As of yesterday [Wednesday] 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.”
Mr Mercer added “Yesterday, WAGCo 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.”
Meanwhile, the Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Security (IES), Nana Amoasi VII, says Ghana is likely to experience more outages in the coming days.
He said the recent outages are a result of financial challenges.
