Kwadwo Nsafoah Poku, a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has said the ongoing power outages in the country have become a problem for the government as a result of utterances made by government members during their time in opposition.
He says comments made by members of the current administration while in opposition are what have erased the nationalistic aspect of the situation.
“It’s a national disaster. But what is creating the problem for them is the utterances that the current administration made when they were in opposition,” he stated on the BigIssue segment on the NewDay morning show, adding that the recent outages existed prior to the fire incident at the GRIDCo substation in Akosombo.
“Let everybody not think that this problem is happening because of Akosombo. We were already having outages across the country,” he noted.
According to him, politicising issues of this nature is not helping, condemning a recent comment by the Ashanti Regional Minister, Dr. Frank Amoakohene, suggesting the ongoing power outages are a result of political sabotage by opposition members managing the power sector.
He questioned the essence of the removal of two district managers in the region, saying the changes have not abated the ongoing challenges.
“It doesn’t help when people want introduce unnecessary politics into this. Yes NPP, NDC we can always do politics but when you have a regional chairman of the NDC in Ashanti region, go on radio and say it is officers of ECG sabotaging the party in the region, and then you have the MD of ECG, on Monday last week go and remove two District managers. Has the lights stopped going off in Ashanti region when you went to remove those two people?” he stated.
The fire outbreak worsened the already existing power outages across the country, which the Electricity Company of Ghana had explained were due to an ongoing transformer upgrade.
Several parts of the country have been experiencing power outages for some time now, with the situation becoming worse since the fire outbreak occurred last week.
Akosombo Dam shuts down completely after GRIDCo substation fire – Ministry of Energy
