The Deputy Energy Minister, William Owuraku-Aidoo, says the erratic power supply being experienced in some parts of the country should stabilize soon.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Owuraku-Aidoo, said the state is “looking at just a matter of days to bring this whole problem to an end.”
Some consumers have been experiencing consistent power cuts in recent weeks, and have been demanding clarity from the state.
The Deputy Minister explained that challenges with an ongoing pigging exercise “is what is creating the problems that we are encountering right now.”
Pipeline pigging is a concept in pipeline maintenance that involves the use of devices known as pigs, which clean pipelines and are capable of checking pipeline condition. This process is done without necessarily interfering with the flow of product in the pipe.
Describing the encountered problems as unexpected, he noted the exercise has taken out over a 1,000 megawatts from the Tema area.
There is also the issue of a lack of gas because of the cleaning out of the pipelines which supplies gas from Nigeria.
“Unfortunately, some of the generation plants that we planned with have encountered some unexpected challenges.”
He however says the pigging exercise has been completed ahead of schedule and will be followed by some analysis.
“The analysis will hopefully come to an end by tomorrow [Thursday], and gas will be introduced somewhere in the beginning of March [2020] and then it will ramp up until we get the full complement of Gas supply to the Tema enclave,” Mr. Owuraku Aidoo said.
Call for dumsor timetable
However, a former Deputy Power Minister, John Jinapor, has accused the government of re-starting the rationing of power, last seen during the power crisis in 2015.
In a statement, he said the relapse into power rationing was “due to the ineptitude and mismanagement of the energy sector” by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
He thus called on the government to publish a load shedding time table “to enable Ghanaians plan their daily schedules.”
Despite the challenges within power sector, government insists that it has solved the problems with severe power cuts known as dumsor.