‘We are not in an era of dumsor’ – Senior Minister

Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo

Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo has assured that the country will not go back to the power rationing era, popularly known as “Dumsor”.

According to the minister, Ghana has enough gas to supply the power generation plants, hence, will not return to the Dumsor era.

Recently, there have been reports of power outages in parts of the country, which has sparked fear among some Ghanaians as to whether the country is facing another power crisis.

The frequent power outage popularly known as “Dumsor” was at its peak between 2014 and 2016.

This resulted in a load shedding during the ‘dumsor’ era which affected business activities and compelled some businesses to even fold up.

The situation largely stemmed from constraints in hydro power generation due to low thermal power generation.

But speaking to Citi Business News, Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo assured that the country is safe from a power crisis.

“Power rationing certainly is not coming back. As I speak, we are producing more power than we are consuming. In fact we have excess of about 600/700 megawatts. That means we have produced far more than we need. So it means we can always add to our power production because we have gas and we need gas to produce power. But you can once a while experience power outage which happens as a result of technical problems and that is not “Dumsor”. We are not in an era of dumsor, he reaffirmed.

Statistics shows that between 2012 and 2016, 885 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises were affected by the power crisis. The crisis also rendered hundreds jobless.

A research conducted by the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER) and the International Growth Centre (IGC) revealed that Ghana also lost at least 200 million cedis in revenue accruing from the operations of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) due to the impact of the power crisis.