Dumsor or no Dumsor: Let’s know the truth!

Over the last few weeks, Ghanaians have been wondering whether the country has been and would be plunged into another round of intermittent power cuts which has become known in our local parlance as dumsor.

This anxiety of Ghanaians follows the shutting down of the FPSO Nkrumah to allow for a two-week maintenance work to be carried out.

Following that development, the Power Ministry headed by deputy Minister, John Jinapor, came out recently to state that it’s likely the country will relapse into dumsor. And just after the minister’s statement, the Power Sector Load Management Committee of the Power Ministry came out to explain that the current disruptions in power supply were only but temporary.

Just yesterday we were told by the Chairman of Load Management Committee, Mr. William Amuna, who doubles as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), there are no plans to implement any load-shedding exercise. Mr. Amuna’s assurance that load-shedding is not an option for now is based on the early rains which, according to him, could improve hydroelectric power generation.

We are all witnesses to what dumsor did to lives, properties, businesses and people’s livelihoods for about three-and-a-half years. Businesses folded up because they had to buy more fuel (petrol or diesel) to generate power and workers were laid off because of high operational cost. In our homes, the least said the better. People’s electrical appliances were damaged permanently.

The point must be noted that the dumsor days were indeed very devastating for both businesses and consumers of electricity. It is something that we all do not want to experience again.

But it is obvious that the problem of dumsor will not go away if managers of this country continue to be economical with the truth and play politics with energy. Even before we were told to brace ourselves up for a two-week dumsor exercise, there were still parts of the country that were not having constant supply of electricity.

The point we on Today are making is that it is about time our leaders took politics out of energy issues. What we tend to forget is that when there are power cuts, everybody is affected irrespective of our party affiliation.

It is in the light of all these that we are urging authorities in the power sector to tell Ghanaians nothing but the truth if there is going to be an impending dumsor or not. We believe when our authorities do that Ghanaians will appreciate the situation and offer their support in helping to find a permanent solution to it.

Indeed, it has been pointed out severally by energy experts that it will take us between three-four (3-4) years to fix our energy problem. So the question we are asking is: why are our politicians not telling us the plain truth about the energy issue?