No Dumsor On Election Day

THE ELECTRICITY Company of Ghana has assured Ghanaians of 24-hour power supply in next month’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

The ECG disclosed this in an elaborate plan to the National Security and the Electoral Commission (EC) on the supply of uninterrupted power in the December 7 general elections.

DAILY GUIDE has gathered that ECG will deploy standby teams with equipment and vehicles to all the 275 constituencies with standby generators in almost all the 29,000 polling centers to ensure quick response to any emergencies.

Also, the EC's election “Strong Room”, which is likely to be at the International Conference Centre in Accra, will have a standby generator with the capacity to supply power to the facility if it is unable to rely on power from the national grid.

Director of Engineering at the ECG, Kwadwo Ayensu Obeng, disclosed to the paper that, although his outfit does not anticipate a shortfall in power supply in December, the strategy should be able to deal with emergency cases that may result in power outages.

“Sometimes it is not the prevention of the outage because it is unpredictable, but when it does happen how fast is your response team? You must equip yourself with the right men and with the right tool,” he said.

He said other measures to ensure constant power supply include positioning engineers at strategic locations to promptly attend to emergency calls to shorten the intervention time.

Meanwhile, the ECG has also awarded a contract to clear trees that interfere with overhead lines as soon as possible to ensure outage-free elections.

BY Daniel Bampoe