Power crises not money problem …Energy Minister says over $1. 5 billion saved

Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh , the Minister responsible for Energy, has said it is ridiculous for any right-thinking person to suggest that the ongoing load shedding is due to government’s inability to raise money to fund the requisite solutions to the power challenges.

He said such a claim is far from reality because the ongoing load shedding is to allow for a re-fixing and repairs of outmoded and outdated transmission lines and such an exercise being done on very high voltage transmission lines cannot be done without first putting off the lights.

“If the power transmission system had challenges, I can say that the challenges were not because of financial. The challenges were because of ongoing repairs and what needed to be done is being done.
“And I challenge some of you that have even the normal 24 volts in your homes, when there is a problem, we all run back first or go to the meter to switch everything off before we call someone to see if we can get sorted.

“So the idea that some people would say that if you are changing wires or stringing wires or if you are working in the bulk supply station like Pokuase, you can just do it side by side is really wishful thinking. I do not think that I can ever teach the Engineers their work but we went there and you spoke to the Engineers themselves and they told you what was going on”, Dr. Opoku Prempeh noted Sunday afternoon when he engaged the media to provide updates on the power situation in the country.

The Minister spoke on delivering reliable and affordable power to Ghanaians and said President Akufo-Addo would never put Ghanaians through an avoidable hardship.

He said the current load shedding would provide space for the experts to fix the decades old challenge once and for all so as to get a reliable and lasting solution to the power challenges.

“To the people of Ghana, we can say please be patient with us because VRA, ECG and GRIDCO and undertaking some serious work that would lead to a solution of the problem very soon”, the Energy Minister added.

He said while the transmission repairs works at Pokuase was virtually complete and should be ready for commissioning by July, the work at Kasoa is over 60 percent complete while the one at the Kumasi to Kintampo is about 75 percent complete.

Gov’t Saves $1.5Billion

Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh was emphatic that the Nana Akufo-Addo led Government has saved Ghana an amount of almost $1.5 Billion through innovative and prudent measures it introduced in managing the power sector and deferring the deployment of power by some three companies in 2019.

He said those companies where to use plants to deploy power but the cost was not making economic sense.

“So just by deferring deployment, we saved nearly 1. 5 billion Dollars. That is about money good enough to have built 62 stadia of the type of Tamale Sports Stadium. Tamale sports stadium costs about 23 million Dollars and the savings by deferment saved the country of a payment of 1.425 billion Dollars.

So some of those initial decisions started paying off and it has paid off till now.

“ We deferred Early Power from deploying in 2019, we deferred Jacobson Power from deploying in 2019 and we deferred Rotan from deploying in 2019. Each of the three would have cost us 475 million dollars each if they had deployed…. Because it was take and pay, Ghana would have paid up as much as 1.426 billion Dollars”, Dr. Opoku Prempeh added.