Industry asked to cut power consumption

Officials of the Volta River Authority and the Electricity Company of Ghana on Friday rose from their meeting on a new load management schedule with a directive to industry to cut consumption.

Officials from the two agencies met with interest groups in the energy sector hoping for a review of the ongoing nationwide power rationing exercise following concerns that the level of water in the Akosombo Dam has reached a very critical level.

They say the dam risks imminent closure if the load shedding exercise was not revised.

Under the current timetable, consumers are denied electricity for 12 hours after every five days of supply and the authorities were hoping that a review would affect both domestic and industrial consumers.

The meeting rather agreed that industry must reduce its consumption of electricity by at least 25 percent as their contribution to save the Akosombo Dam from collapse.

The President of the Association of Ghana Industries, Tony Oteng-Gyasi told Joy News industry consented to the challenge and individually will devise means of helping to save the situation.

The measures include capable businesses running their own power generators, reducing working hours, announcing leave for staff or the actual shut down of parts of production plants.

“They told us in no uncertain terms that this is a real emergency …From the way the discussion went and from the very useful suggestions from industry, we have agreed that there are different measures that different industries will have to take…It appeared from the discussion that April is an emergency that something needs to be done because from May, June, July, the rains will come.”