As President John Dramani Mahama works hard with assurances to fix the current erratic power supply popularly called ‘dumsor’ in the country, the director of Information Communication Technology (ICT) of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ronald Kwaku Boadi has said the company needs private partnership to fix the ‘dumsor’ crisis.
The ECG director made this known at a stakeholders’ meeting organized by the Central Regional Coordinating Council to interact with and sensitize Ghanaians on the need to involve the private sector to manage the company.
Mr. Boadi explained the company needs $400 million every year for infrastructure development in order to solve the power crisis, but the government is handicapped in raising such a huge amount to fix the dumsor, therefore, there is the need for the government to bring in the private sector to rescue the country from ‘dumsor.’
He again stated that the Akosombo dam is dry and the ECG is not getting enough supply from the dam as they used to have, hence, the total capacity that they can supply has been affected, noting that the company does not have any reserve that they can utilize and because of that they have to embark on load shedding so that everybody can get some of the power.
According to him, getting private partners to manage and operate the company will address the problem by increasing the generation capacity that the company needs so that at any stage when one system or the other collapses they know that they have a reserve that they can always fall on.
“We have our destiny in our own hands and need more power plants so that we can generate our power, that is the reality of the situation so we must be honest to Ghanaians as soon as possible that without private partnership ‘dumsor’ will be there forever.” The ECG director observed.
On his part, the Technical Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Dr. Kofi Asamoah Baah, admitted that government does not have $400 million to invest in ECG so government has signed a compact initiative with the United States of America as part of its objective in ensuring adequate and reliable power supply to both household and industry.
He added that the State will enter into contract with the private partner where the private partner will have the exclusive right to operate, maintain and carry out investments in ECG for a given number of years.
He said government’s idea of bringing in the private sector to operate and manage the ECG is a good idea that Ghanaians must embrace because the private partners will have the responsibility over the operation and maintenance of all assets and investments during the period, but the government will remain the sole owner of ECG and owns 100% shares per the agreement.
Dr. Baah said the power crisis the country is experiencing has caused huge losses in revenue to the government and that the country loses about 2 to 5% of Gross Domestic Product annually as a result of lost economic output due to the insufficient and unreliable power supply.
According to him, the government will select a partner with adequate technical and financial capacity and track record to turn around the utility company through a fair, competitive and transparent process.
Dr. Baah gave the assurance that getting private partners to manage and operate the ECG will never affect the workers as is being speculated in the media.
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