I have read a statement from Hon. John Jinapor (MP), Co-Chairman of the Transition Team sub-committee on Energy and Natural Resources, in which he claims that “massive load shedding looms as Ghana’s fuel stock depletes” and seeks to blame His Excellency President Akufo-Addo and his government for it.
Mr. Jinapor is wrong. Load shedding does not “loom”. It is caused either by technical or emergency power generation issues or a lack of competence in managing the power sector. Mr. Jinapor seems to be haunted clearly by the latter.
By the time of leaving office, President Akufo-Addo’s government left in stock, light crude oil which Cenpower currently generates power with, whilst AKSA continues to take delivery of heavy fuel6 oil which it generates power with. This fact is easily verifiable with a phone call to both power plants. The responsibility of the new administration is to not only procure more liquid fuel to keep the lights on, whenever liquid fuel becomes required to complement gas supply, but also plan competently to avert power supply disruptions. We did it and they can do it too, if they can.
The NDC government should get to work as we did, the reason we kept the lights on for eight years, regardless of the difficult times, and stop the needless finger pointing. That is not the way we kept the lights on.
The Author Herbert Krapa is a former Minister for Energy