POWER CRISIS IN GHANA

Ghana, the gateway of Africa is one place you wouldn’t want to miss when given the opportunity to visit the African continent. One can talk of gold, coffee, cocoa, timbre and others when the name Ghana is mentioned. As country, we have been blessed with so much to talk of. In the likes of freedom, democracy, peace and unity. Ghana has all but is being faced with a nightmare that seems to eat up the good things in the country. Power crisis.

Currently, Ghana is facing electricity crisis which has now become the talk of the day. This power crisis which is now referred to as “Dumsor” which when literally translated means “on and off” issue has paved it way into being a part of the Ghanaian life. In this era of a world of technology, society cannot do away with electricity or power if it has to develop. The energy/electricity has now become the backbone of every country of which must not be compromised with. The country had faced similar situations. According to the history of the country, the situation has popped up for about three times already in some past years and up till now no permanent solutions have been given out.

In advanced countries, majority of power failures from national grid last only a few hours. In Ghana, blackouts last days or even weeks and can therefore be seen as a major catastrophic failures that has completely shut down production in most companies, including critical infrastructures such as telecommunication networks, financial services, water supplies and hospitals in the country. For the past three years our lives have been programmed to the effects of the situation at hand. Initially, there was a national load shedding schedule time table of which every community in Ghana was supposed to enjoy twenty-four hours supply of power. As days passed, the situation intensified and the national load shedding was adjusted to suit the new development. Instead of the twenty four hours light and twelve hours off, it was rather changed to the vice versa. Twenty four hours off and twelve hours on. At the moment, the situation has gotten out of hands and one cannot tell when next the light would be taken and if it is being taken, one can’t tell when it’s coming on.

It is by no means that the power outages in Ghana have had serious disastrous effects on many areas of our national economy. Human lives have been lost due to life-support system failures. Hospitals and nursing homes have suffered loses, and companies have collapsed having their workers laid off, all due to consistent power failures.

According to the Electricity of Ghana, one of its major challenge to restore this energy crisis is inadequate funds. One of the reasons for this “Dumsor” crisis is that VRA, GRIDCO and IPPs cannot access the needed capital in order to maintain their machines not to talk of importing new ones to increase the electricity supply. ECG on the other hand is unable to collect all the money they should after selling the power to customers.

In conclusion, this current situation at hand can be corrected by the government of Ghana if only it is willing invest money in the electricity sector by buying light, crude oil for the various power plants. There is also the need for good maintenance culture to be able to sustain the productivity of old machines. Lastly, if possible, building new dams and power plants since the total population increases as the day goes by.