Another energy crisis?

The debilitating energy crisis that hit the country some years ago, which the immediate past National Democratic Congress (NDC) government claimed to have resolved, appears to have resurfaced.

Reports from all parts of the country indicate that power outages are occurring on a regular basis, especially, at this period of the year when the heat is at its peak. Apart from this difficult situation, the unplanned outages are affecting electrical appliances in our domestic homes. Already, some businesses have started complaining about the return of the unplanned power cuts, and this is where the danger lies.

In the past five or more years that this energy crisis has been with us, the country has lost huge sums of money, in the form of revenue, because businesses which pay the bulk of the taxes are not working. Payment of income taxes also went down, because employers were not getting the power to work to enable them pay their employees at the end of the month.

Small scale businesses, especially, sole proprietorship, also suffered heavily from this energy crisis, and the overall effect is the current messy state of our economy. To help address the problem, the majority of Ghanaian voters decided to vote for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), which, they think, has the managerial acumen to find a lasting solution to the problem.

It is based on this that The Chronicle is warning the Akufo-Addo government not to take things for granted, but work around the clock quickly to find a lasting solution to the Dum-so problem.

Whether the NDC left a messy economy or not is not a bother to the ordinary man, who queued in the scorching sun to vote for the NPP to come back to power to resolve problems confronting the country.

The Chronicle is, however, happy with the report attributed to the Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko, that the current crisis, which is being attributed to repair works going on at the Atuabo Gas Plant, should be over by the end of the day (last week Friday). “We have gone through from 1st February till now with very minimal disruption. We should have come to the end of the programme (repair) on Feb 23rd, however, Tullow, the field operator, requested a couple of days' extension to do the peak testing, and so it moved from 21st to 24th February. Today, (Friday) is the day when we come to the end of the disruptions, and this evening we start the flow of gas, which brings us to our normal state. We've gone through two days of disruptions, but I can tell Ghanaians that, that is the end of the disruptions,” Citi FM quoted the Energy Minister as saying.

We hold the Minister to his word, and hope the last week Friday deadline that he gave during the radio interview will be respected. We know the Minister to be an accomplished economist, but not an engineer, but for him to make such a statement about bringing a closure to the problem, meant he had received adequate briefing from his engineers.

He dares, therefore, not fail Ghanaians who have much confidence in his administration.