Ghana’s main opposition party has
urged the government to introduce a timetable for rolling power cuts after
weeks of outages that have hit homes and businesses across the country. The New
Patriotic Party (NPP) on Thursday criticised President John Dramani Mahama’s
administration for not admitting to the problem, which has become known locally
as “dumsor”. “Government will not have a timetable/schedule published because
that will amount to an admission of systematic load-shedding/dumsor,” said NPP
spokesman Nana Akomea. “But Ghanaians have been suffering a patterned
load-shedding over the last few months.
Government’s refusal to acknowledge
it and publish a schedule has meant that consumers and industry cannot plan,
thus imposing uncertainty on the Ghanaian consumer.” The insufficient power
supply threatens to be a major issue in the presidential election later this
year as Mahama seeks to win a second term of office. In recent years,
electricity has been cut for 24 hours at a time, hitting a stuttering economy
seeking to recover from a depreciating currency, a yawning public sector
deficit and high inflation. Companies and factories in Ghana are forced to use
generators when the public supply goes off, driving up costs. In 2015, hotels
shut down as a result of the problem while the Ghana Employers’ Association
said the impact on businesses saw nearly 13,000 workers laid off.
Last month, Ghana’s main airport was
brought to a halt because of a power cut. The government, which has attributed
the problem partly to Ghana’s economic success driving up demand for
electricity, has introduced some measures to tackle the problem, including the
use of a power station on a barge docked off Accra. Although President Mahama
has refused to declare a power crisis, he has promised action to improve power
supply, including promoting private sector partnerships to boost renewable
energy. Last week he blamed insufficient electricity supplies on difficulties
in obtaining oil from Nigeria, whose output has been hit by an increase in
militant attacks on installations and infrastructure in recent months.
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