By The Public Utility Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Ghana has urged the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to devise strategies to address the recent power outages rather than demanding a timetable from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) concerning the recent power outages.
This comes after PURC issued a seven-day ultimatum to the ECG to furnish a comprehensive incident report on power outages occurring from January 1, 2024, to the present date.
As per the directive, the Commission requires ECG to detail the incidents of power outages, including the volume of load curtailed, energy not served, and the number of affected customers.
However, in a press release dated March 28 and signed by the General Secretary of the union, Michael Adumatta Nyantakyi, it was highlighted that the current power crisis stems from limited power transmitted to the ECG.
The release also disputed claims that 630 overloaded transformers were the cause of the erratic power outages. It clarified that there were 33,000 transformers in the country, therefore merely 630 transformers cannot cause the erratic power problems.
On the back of this, the release said the PURC should be proactive in investigating the cause of the power crisis rather than demanding a timetable.
“The question that needs to be answered is should not PURC, as a regulator, be requesting data from the system operator on outages of BSPs to avoid the speculation by the good customers of ECG of deliberately denying them of power supply which is critical for socioeconomic development?
“Or the upstream challenges are the issues that need to be addressed? Indeed, the cost of unsold energy of the dumping of a BSP is more expensive than a planned outage by ECG for maintenance works. For example, when the system operator (GRIDCo) dumps one BSP such as the Mallam BSP, virtually the entire western part of Accra goes off, including Weija water works and parts of Kasoa. We are hereby appealing to the system regulator to address these issues at the earliest possible time.”
On the back of this, he said “We are hereby appealing to the system regulator to address these issues at the earliest possible time.”
The union highlighted that although ECG has not yet reached its desired level of efficiency, it has made substantial strides by adopting a cashless system, paperless operations, and end-to-end digital meter reading, among other initiatives.
It suggested that PURC could collaborate effectively with ECG to address the power crisis.
“It would be recalled that when the government of Ghana was struggling to finance the IPPs, ECG intervened with a monthly regular payment that was acceptable to them till date. Since then, the IPPs Chamber has not threatened the good people of this country with ‘dumsor’.
“It will interest key stakeholders including PURC, that in the last one and a half years, under the leadership of this current management, ECG has made significant improvements towards becoming a modern utility company with unparalleled achievements of more than doubling its revenue collections and transforming its operations to become a smart utility company. Today, ECG runs a cashless system for the first time in the history of the company, the paperless system, end-to-end digital meter reading and spot billing,” the statement added.
