By In a recent interview on Citi TV, Edward Bawa, the Member of Parliament for Bongo Constituency, shed light on the measures undertaken by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government to combat the persistent power outages in Ghana.
Mr. Bawa emphasized the concerted efforts made by the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama administration to tackle the power crisis. He highlighted that the Mahama-led government prioritized resolving the issue and made significant investments in the energy sector to alleviate the effects of the power outages.
During its tenure, the Mahama administration faced notable criticism when Ghana experienced a period of power crisis, famously known as “Dumsor.” Despite these challenges, some NDC leaders have asserted that they successfully addressed the power crisis before the end of their term.
Mr. Bawa reiterated that the Mahama government effectively tackled the underlying causes of the power outages during its tenure. He mentioned specific issues such as generation capacity, fuel security, and the settlement of accumulated legacy debts, which were successfully addressed by the government in 2015.
He noted that these measures, implemented by the former president, aimed to ensure a stable and reliable supply of electricity to meet the needs of the Ghanaian population.
“Essentially, by the close of 2015, the major issues that had to do with the power sector had been dealt with. When the NDC came, obviously these problems were still there waiting to strike again. Unfortunately, it reared its head in 2013, when we had a problem with the breached pipeline and that told us that we needed to do something about our fuel security properly. By the close of 2015, we had procured enough generation power to be able to deal with the immediate cause of “Dumsor”.
“Generation was the immediate issue, that part by the close of 2015, actually had been dealt with. There was also a financial aspect of it which was dealt with, particularly just the end of 2015 and 2016. We were dealing with the debts and then by the close of 2015, we had also dealt with the fuel security issue because we had then brought on board Atuabo Gas Plant that was going to utilize our gas,” he said.
