Dumsor looms; Mahama's Ameri contracts expired, Akufo-Addo fined with power judgement debts
- Many Ghanaians believe Dumsor is back
- It follows weeks of erratic power supply across the country
- Ghana has so far been fined for terminating power projects from the Mahama era
The Ghanaian public is convinced of the re-emergence of the era of erratic power supply known as “dumsor”. In less than a month, over 10 cases of national power outages have been reported by the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO).
Many consumers of the commodity have taken to their personal social media handles to voice out their concern over the matter.
A nationwide power outage was experienced in the afternoon on Sunday, march 7. The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) has attributed this development to some technical faults and thus assured of fixing the program immediately.
Source: Facebook
The event of Sunday afternoon follows a series of many others that have ravaged businesses and households to the extent that many suspect the comeback of the “dumsor era”.
So far, government has ruled out a rebirth of dumsor as the energy ministry says the country has enough power capacity. From the words of GRIDCO, technical issues regarding supply of gas are reasons behind these outages.
In February, the International Court of Arbitration awarded a cost of $134 million and an interest of $30 million against the Government of Ghana over the cancellation of an Emergency Power Agreement with GCGP limited.
The contract was cancelled under the former Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko as part of several other energy contracts cancelled by the NPP on the basis that the country did not need those power agreements.
The ruling by the International Court of Arbitration ordered the government of Ghana to pay to “GPGC the full value of the Early Termination Payment, together with Mobilization, Demobilization and preservation and maintenance costs in the amount of US$ 134,348,661, together also with interest thereon from 12 November 2018 until the date of payment, accruing daily and compounded monthly, at the rate of LIBOR for six-month US dollar deposits plus six percent(6%).”
In other energy news
The BOOT (Build, Own, Operate and Transfer) agreement between the government of Ghana and AMERI on the 250MW thermal plant ends on January 31.
Per the agreement, the plant will be taken over by the government of Ghana via the Volta River Authority. As of Sept 2020, AMERI wrote to the government on the terms of the contract and its readiness to hand over the plant.
“I can confirm that government has not yet responded to the letter. Ghana's indebtedness to AMERI (over $32 million) has not been settled, no technical audit has been conducted and no staff of VRA has been trained to operate the thermal plant. In terms of the economics, it will be in our interest to own and operate the plant,” an economist, Eugene Bawell, revealed on his Facebook page.
One thing of much concern is that the same AMERI deal got Boakye Agyarko fired as the minister for energy.
Already, there is the possibility of Ghana experiencing some power outages this year. Independent Power Producers (IPPs) have all warned of ending their services if the government does not pay them for the debt owed by over 150 million dollars.
Yvonne Nelson says Mahama ended dumsor
Ghanaian actress, Yvonne Nelson, has said former President John Mahama was the one who fixed dumsor before exiting power in 2016.
Yvonne, known for her bold political utterances, was reacting to a post she made on a twitter in which a user apparently misunderstood her.
According to the user by the name Antaru Mashud, Yvonne fought for Akufo-Addo to come to power in 2016 only for Ghanaians to suffer.
Meanwhile, shortly after Yvonne led that vigil against Mahama, she turned around to commend him for the improvement in the power supply.
She also showered a lot of praises on Mahama for some of his achievements before he lost power.
Yvonne, for instance, praised Mahama for face-lifting the Kotoka International Airport, stressing that she was so impressed.
She again praised the former president for his massive infrastructural developments for Ghana.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
