Ghana Dumsor: Ghanaians experience ‘dumsor’ from April to July – here’s what you need to know

Power distribution company Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) says they are initiating further Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) talks on the April-July load shedding schedule.

GRIDCo officials say there is a charge reduction. Some major maintenance work needs to be done within three months.

GRIDCo’s corporate communications manager, Ebenezer Amankwah, explains that some parts of Ghana experience intermittent power outages, which is why they say dema engineers are going to work in substations at plants across the country.

Maintenance work according to GRIDCo will be necessary, so let’s say they are going to solve the challenge of congestion in the dema systems.

GRIDCo is currently having an internal discussion over ECG management, so they say they are going to come out more load shedding schedule for affected areas.

This is part of GRIDCo’s plans to allow households and businesses to plan well for the erratic three-month power supply.

He added that they are “confident that these key projects will be completed from July this year” and there will be stability in the system.

Authorities say the load shedding schedule will cover the specific areas that will be affected and the duration of the power outages.

“Dey we are looking this week to involve all stakeholders and reach a better agreement on the areas that will be affected, when they will be affected n duration,” revealed Mr. Amankwah.

Between 2013 and 2016, energy analysts reveal that Ghana lost up to USD 3 billion in terms of economic activities and thousands of losses during the nearly four years of the energy crisis.

At the peak of the power supply crisis, the country’s electricity users experienced up to 16 hours without power a day.

Ghanaians call the erratic load shedding of the power supply “dumsor”, the inconvenience causing demonstrations in the main cities of Accra den Kumasi, where protesters criticize the government for poor management of the economy.

Critical observers of the energy sector believe that Ghana’s generation capacity is fine, but political interference with power generation and distribution companies is the recent cause of the decline.

Former Deputy Energy Minister under the NDC government, John Jinapor, said that “political influence is the cause, tariffs are lowered to make people happy, but three years later we have an erratic power supply.”

The management of the electricity sector to be transparent, dem to eliminate politics and allow generation and distribution companies to operate independently of political influence.

Once the money of the companies so that they do not come through the government, reduce the rates or give free electricity, it will affect the excess operations that will later cause power outages.