The Akosombo Dam and the future of Power supply in Ghana

We cannot be much happier than welcome the good news that by the grace of God we are to enjoy uninterrupted power supply as of 1/10/07. Ghanaians have suffered but endured harshly, a year of power outages which unfortunately beefed up crime and theft in the country, saw industries lose revenue and others reduced production all to the detriment of the economy. We cannot also forget the numerous generators that were purchased making traders of this item wealthy while noise pollution worsened. Like many other Ghanaians, I ask; HAVE WE LEARNT A LESSON FROM THIS SITUATION OR ARE WE GOING TO SEE A REPEAT AGAIN?

Ghana faced a similar situation of power outages during the days of the NDC government and from the events we have all seen and experienced we can all agree that a permanent remedy was not sought then. One therefore marvels when NDC politicians try to play on the minds of Ghanaians for cheap political points claiming to offer their expertise to solve a problem which they never properly resolved when they were in power. One can confidently say this because if the then NDC government had truly tackled the issue of power, the country would not have been in darkness when the level of water in Akosombo dam dropped. Here one would have assumed that national interest would precede political gimmicks of lies and cheap promises that never get delivered.

One does not know what the NPP government has learnt from this situation either. Ghanaians and most importantly the NPP government need to thank God for bringing in the rains. At least a disgrace of the country still being in darkness after their promise of restoring power by end of September has been averted. One will hope that the rise in level of the dam does not make the government rest its oars and forget what Ghanaians have been through.

Infact Ghana was a laughing stock around the globe when we were parading ourselves as a proud nation at 50 yet could not solve our basic problems. Interim measures of a some Megawatts of energy from various plants being installed around is not the solution. The NDC said they made available in their time alternate sources of power, generating several Megawatts of energy during the time of the electricity crises while they were in office but as we have all seen, that never helped prevent another crises.

The present government needs to be commended on the initiative of the Bui dam but that is some years away from completion. Would we have continual power supply should the rains stop today and the water level in the dam dropped in the next few weeks? One really wonders if our politicians are really as visionary as they claim or are just taking the nation for a ride.

While we slept in darkness, our electricity bills were never reduced and yet we hear tariffs for electricity and other utilities are going to be increased. ECG wants consumers to pay for better services yet one wonders if revenue from these tariff increases will go into provision of alternative energy sources to ensure we are guaranteed no more black outs if Akosombo begins to evaporate. Ghanaians will be a lot happier if they knew how this revenue would help avert another Akosombo crises.

Two times the same crisis is more than enough to ignore and not remedy. Heads will have to roll next time.

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