The Minority in Parliament has slammed the government over its handling of the energy sector crisis, citing a return to the debilitating “dumsor” era that plagued the country between 2011 and 2016.
According to the Minority, the government’s promises to fix the current power outages are nothing new, as similar assurances were made during his first administration’s.
“The promises by the President in his address to the nation to fix the current ‘dumsor’ cannot be different from those he made during the four years of ‘dumsor’ endured by Ghanaians between the end of 2011 and 2016,” the Minority stated.
The Minority also criticized the government’s creation of a new Ministry of Power, which failed to alleviate the power crisis.
“Not even the creation of a new Ministry of Power by him could save the nation from the excruciating effects of ‘dumsor’,” they noted.
Furthermore, the Minority accused the government of attempting to downplay the severity of the power crisis by blaming it on “maintenance” and “localized faults.”
“Yet, the Ghanaian people knew ‘dumsor’ had not ended, because they lived with it and continued to suffer from it,” they said.
To mitigate the impact of the erratic power supplies, the Minority is calling on the government to publish a load shedding timetable.
“We the Mighty Minority call on the government to publish a load shedding timetable to help people and businesses plan effectively to offset some of the losses the economy is currently suffering from,” they urged.
In addition, the Minority criticized the government’s management of the petroleum sector, citing a decline in crude oil production due to contracts signed with companies lacking technical and financial capacity.
“However, President Akufo-Addo administration, rather introduced measures for aggressive reserve replacement on assumption of office in 2017. As a result of these measures, between 2018 and 2022, seven discoveries of oil and gas were made,” they noted.
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