Kofi Kapito, CEO of the Consumer Protection Agency, has stated that the current energy crisis makes it difficult for the Electricity Company of Ghana to issue a load-shedding timetable. Speaking on Eyewitness News with Umaru Sanda on Tuesday, April 23, Mr. Kapito said, unlike previous instances where power outages stemmed primarily from generation capacity limitations, the current scenario is complicated by financial constraints, which, to him, does not necessarily require a load-shedding time table.
He explained that, once the financial bit is addressed, there will be no need for a timetable. “As we all know it is not like before when we used to build some transformers which we knew is going to take us some months and so we have to do some proper plan and then bring out a timetable.
Unfortunately, because it is financial, it is difficult for ECG to say that they will bring a timetable simply because people are calling for it. If they bring the timetable and money becomes available, thus, they are able to pay the IPPs or they have to buy the necessary fuel for power plants, then what happens to the timetable? That I think is the challenge the ECG is facing.
“ECG is in the business to sell you power. When ECG gets the electricity, they have no need apart from selling it to the consumer or anybody who needs it. So, when people sometimes behave as if ECG has the power and they are doing something or intentionally not distributing it, I find it a little difficult,” he stated.
The state power distributor, ECG, has come under public criticism in recent times for the disruption in the power supply, popularly referred to as ‘dumsor’ and their failure to publish a load-shedding timetable to that effect.
By: William Narh
