The government is working hard to find a lasting solution to the power cuts being experienced in parts of the country, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said.

He explained that the recent power outages were as a result of ongoing maintenance works on some of the power systems to ensure stable power supply, and not that "Ghana has gone back to the days of dumsor".

President Akufo-Addo gave the assurance at a durbar of the chiefs and the people of the Mamprugu/Moaduri District in the North East Region held at Yagba yesterday as part of activities of his two-day tour of the region.

"Most of the equipment of our electricity system is very old and weak and so we are replacing all of them now, so that we can have a very robust electricity system,” he said.

Consolidation of policies

The President told the gathering that in his second term, it was his intention to consolidate all the policies he implemented in the first term, so that they become a permanent feature of the governance of the country.

He said it was evident that all the policies were transforming lives, hence the need to consolidate them to ensure utmost benefits for all.

"I am happy with the testimonies the people are giving about policies such as the Planting for Food and Jobs and the free senior high school and I will do everything possible to safeguard them," the President noted.

The Chief of Yagba, Naa Sugru Mumuni, in a speech read on his behalf, said the chiefs and the people of the area were convinced that the government was committed to ensuring that they received their share of the national cake.

As a district noted for agriculture, he intimated, "your Planting for Food and Jobs programme has contributed significantly to ensure food security and improvement in the lives of the people".

The President also inspected ongoing work on the Regional Agriculture Department at Yagba to round off his tour.

Background

For some time now, Ghana has been experiencing intermittent power outages, which the authorities attribute to ongoing works to fix system challenges.

The people have had to bear the brunt, with businesses hard hit.

While some of the technical challenges led to localised outages, a couple of them plunged almost the entire country into darkness.

For instance, at 11:06 p.m. on April 3, this year, a conductor on the Tema-Accra East transmission line fell at Trasacco, leading to power outages in major parts of the Greater Accra Region.

Again, on Sunday, March 7, this year, a challenge with the power system led to a total system shutdown about 2:10 p.m., leading to interruption in power supply to all parts of the country.

In April this year, the Energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, appealed to Ghanaians to remain calm while steps were taken to address the intermittent power outages in some parts of the country.

“We are working feverishly to resolve the challenges which have arisen as a result of technical difficulties with our transmission lines and it is our hope that that issue will be resolved by the end of the year,” he said.

Time table

To ensure that the affected customers were not unduly overburdened by the power cuts, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) had come out with scheduled power outages, mainly in parts of Accra.

The ECG announced the third phase yesterday, to begin on Monday, June 28 and last for 22 days, ending on July 19.
In a press statement, the ECG said the latest outage schedule, which would be done in collaboration with the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), was to help facilitate the work of contractors as part of projects to improve power supply reliability and system voltages.

As a result of that, the load to the Trasacco Bulk Supply Point (BSP) will be managed to enable the construction of towers at the Volta, Accra East and Achimota substations.