Energy analyst Kojo Poku has asked the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) to shun political interferences with issues about power outages in the country.
He noted that the company should remain truthful to Ghanaians and be able to announce to the general public if there is a need for a power outage.
Speaking to Joy News, Kojo Poku explained that it is worrying for GRIDCo to deny instances it had announced power outages, only for the country to experience it.
“The thing with electricity is that if you are doing maintenance and the lights are going to go off, you can minimise the outages, but you cannot say it cannot happen at all.
“So what I have a challenge with is the truth to Ghanaians, if there will be outages, so be it. I mean, if you don’t tell us, we are going to experience it anyway as we’ve seen what happened last night across the country.
His comment comes after GRIDCo had said the reconstruction of some transmission lines from Achimota to Mallam substations will not result in power outages.
But the company earlier served notice of daily outages in some parts of the country starting on April 9, to June 30, due to a reconstruction of transmission lines from Achimota to Mallam substations.
It said the reconstruction is to meet the growing demand for electricity in Accra and its environs.
“The outage will affect customers served by the Electricity Company of Ghana’s distribution systems crossing these transmission lines during the day,” GRIDCo said in its earlier statement.
Less than 48 hours later, GRIDCo, in a new statement, noted that there wouldn’t be outages regarding the reconstruction of transmission lines from Achimota to Mallam substations.
GRIDCo assured that its bulk supply points of Kasoa, Pokuase and Accra Central will transmit power to the substations that are being reconstructed.
“Whilst we confirm the reconstruction work on our transmission lines has commenced since Saturday, April 9, 2022, we wish to assure the public that the ongoing work will not lead to any ‘Dumsor”.
“The bulk supply points of Kasoa, Mallam, Accra Central, Pokuase and Achimota Substations have enough transformer capacities to meet the desired demand without any load curtailment or load shedding,” GRIDCo said to rebut its earlier statement.
However, Kojo Poku recounted a similar situation during the administration of former Energy Minister, Peter Amewu.
“We had a similar experience about three years ago when Honourable Peter Amewu was Minister. They were doing some work at Pokuase; they issued a statement that there were going to be outages. Later, a similar thing happened, and they said no, the outages are not going to happen.
“They were now trying to decipher the outages through a certain corridor, the corridor got overloaded, and the whole thing blew up, and it became a bigger problem,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Joy News’ check at the Energy Ministry indicates that the Ministry is expected to hold a press conference on Wednesday, April 13, on issues pertaining to power.
