<<Print>>

Former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Mr. Alex Mould, has asserted that the country is in the present state of energy doldrums simply because the New Patriotic Party under the leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo, failed to put in place any contigency plan to arrest the power crisis.

According to him, eventhough the John Mahama administration had its fair share of challenges in the energy sector, they were able to resolve it because the NDC planned ahead by putting in place adequate measures.
 
Speaking on Okay FM’s Ade Akye Abia Programme, the former GNPC boss claimed the NPP government, after taking over failed to plan for the future.

"If they should continue this way I can assure you that the current power crises is going to be severe.

"Though the NDC government prepared adequately to solve the power crisis which was named Dumsor during our tenure, the NPP government does not show any sign of putting up any plan to continue with what we started to solve the energy crisis," Alex Mould opined.



Power cuts in Accra began more than a month ago with some communities experiencing blackouts throughout the night, causing residents to sleep outside to beat the heat.

Despite assurances from the Minister that it was a week’s problem, the situation has persisted.

The past weekend, scores of residents in the capital and other big cities experienced prolonged and persistent power cuts

However, Ghanaians may now heave a sigh of relief as steps have been taken to provide them with a schedule on the recent blackouts.

The decision was taken at a meeting between Power Distribution Services (PDS), Volta River Authority (VRA) and the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC) on Thursday.

Public Relations Officer of the PURC, Bawa Mounkeila, has indicated that the daily updates on the blackouts have become necessary to relieve the ordinary citizen from the power challenges.

“…So, we insisted that PDS makes an announcement at least 24 hours in a daily schedule. If there is any information to those who will go off on a particular day, they will know ahead of time. This should not take us more than 24 hours. However, when the announcements are made, we will monitor and ensure that it is followed religiously. By Friday, we should be expecting daily updates on outages in electricity.”

“PURC believes that the customer should not suffer the difficulties we are going through. What we are saying is that, they come up with information telling the customer when he or she [will be without power]. The commission demanded a timetable for the entire 10-12 days period that the Minister indicated,” he added.