Speaker sets committee to investigate 'dumsor' in parliament

The speaker of Parliament, Edward Doe Adjaho, has set up an adhoc committee to investigate frequent power cuts to the House.

He has requested a report to be delivered to him by next week.

The Speaker expressed disappointment over the frequent power cuts in parliament and its impact on the work of the House.

The committee is made up of the Majority and Minority leaders, two Whips and two members of the House to investigate and report to the House on Novem­ber 25, 2014 during a Committee of the Whole meeting.

The directive was on the heels of consistent power cuts in the Cham­ber yesterday during parliamentary proceedings.

The first power cut was a few min­utes after the Speaker began prayers for proceedings to commence. That apparently led to suspension of sit­ting for about an hour. Upon resump­tion, the power went off again when the Deputy Minister of Education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, was re­sponding to a question on the floor of the House.

Papa Owusu Ankomah, Member of Parliament for .Sekondi said the situation had gotten serious and therefore questioned if the power cuts were as a result of the new in­stallations or the on-going power rationing by the Electricity Com­pany of Ghana.

But, Mr. Adjaho stated that dur­ing the presentation of the government's budget statement and economic policy on Wednesday November 19, 2014, they used the generator throughout the day in or­der to avoid any power interruption during the presentation.

According to him, yesterday morning, he enquired if they could still use the generator or the main electricity, but was assured that the problem had been rectified only for him to start praying for the power not to go off.

He further stated that during the recess, the Minority Caucus also ex­perienced some power failures dur­ing a press conference for which he ordered a report and subsequently forwarded it to both the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Mr. Adjaho, therefore, noted that "this is the time for us to investigate this. It is unacceptable for us to con­tinue going through this and we will investigate it."

The country is currently under power rationing system due to short­falls in power generation by the vari­ous power producers.

Responding to series of questions on the floor of the House yesterday, Mr. Ablakwa said "a number of schools have been inspected and rec­ommended for upgrading into boarding status, but awaiting ap­proval due to budgetary constraints."