The Darkness & The Sorrow

Businesses are collapsing whilst domestic appliances acquired at expensive prices are getting destroyed through power outages and surges.

The story runs across all households and businesses, yet those responsible for managing the affairs of state are unable to tell us when the game changer is coming.

We continue to wish things would change one day because we do not have access to a reliable prognosis of power supply in the country.

Yesterday like other businesses across the country, we in the DAILY GUIDE had our worst power outage moments since we began hosting the inefficiency dubbed 'dumsor dumsor' in Ghanaian parlance.

It was not difficult to agree with the experts' prognosis that the worst times were yet to come when they said so last year.

Indeed had the schedule of outages been strictly adhered to, we would have learnt to countenance the power anomalies without qualms. Not so, however, when after waiting for hours on end power is not restored at the time stated in the schedules as advertised in the media.

The challenges as we are countenancing them now are neither the making of the Electricity Company of Ghana nor the Volta River Authority's. They belong to the corridors of political power where the buck really stops.

Our situation was pitiable yesterday as we struggled to produce this edition. Power was off in the morning at a time when our generator was undergoing a scheduled maintenance schedule. Seven o'clock in the evening, which was the time the power was expected to be restored, elapsed as we waited disappointingly.

When power was eventually restored, we were an hour or so behind the scheduled time of power restoration.

Thousands of Ghanaians have lost their jobs through this seemingly insurmountable energy crisis about which we had earlier commented. Given the inconvenience the situation is spawning on businesses, there is no over-flogging this subject.

What worsens the situation is the fact that because so many promises have gone unfulfilled regarding when things would improve, nobody is ready to take new dates. In fact those behind the failed promises have even stopped making new ones, apprehensive of the backlash.

We would rather stay in darkness not knowing when to expect light than be continually administered doses of lies about a 2015, 2018 game changers.

We have stated already that there is something those at the helm are not getting right. Shouldn't they consult those who have managed it before and know what to do to reverse the unacceptable situation?

It is annoying when in the midst of this confusion—that is, the power outages—government officials ignore the humiliation that is their lot and make silly remarks about non-existent feats.

One of such officials (name withheld) reportedly made a funny allusion about Ghana being the hub of energy in the West African sub-region.

If the above was intended to serve as a comic relief at a time when we are disappointed at those managing state affairs, we would not mind laughing over it. But when on the other hand the man behind it, a minister for that, said it for a serious effect, then we are sorry we cannot take such nonsense when the effects of the inefficiencies on their part is denying people their daily bread and threatening many others' source of livelihood.