A leading member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has averred that the intermittent power supply a.k.a. dumsor, being experienced by residents of the Ashanti Region became worse after the renaming and commissioning of the Ameri Power Plant.
Betty Nah-Akuyea Mould-Iddrisu, has said on Hot Issues on TV3 Sunday, April 28, 2024, that the government’s promise of curbing the power outages in the region with the commissioning of the plant was a mere gimmick as things have now become worse.
As a resident of the region herself, Madam Mould-Iddrisu explained how they have suffered the past few months with dumsor, maintaining that the situation was better even when the plant was idle.
“And they believe that they have suffered. I come from a small village in Kwabre and I tell you, what we suffered, I was home last week, the dumsor, after the renaming of Ameri Power Plant, the dumsor that we have experienced in Ashanti Region is unparalleled even during our time, there wasn’t dumsor like that and people are really now fed up,” she alleged.
President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo commissioned the first phase of the Kumasi 1 Thermal Power Plant (K1TPP) at Anwomaso in the Oforikrom Municipality in the Ashanti Region, with a call on the private sector to make use of government investments in the power sector in the region to promote industrialisation and economic growth.
He said Kumasi, the Ashanti regional capital, was known for businesses and expressed the hope that the private sector would reciprocate the government’s gesture by investing in the area to make use of reliable electricity supply.
“It is my expectation that these enterprises would expand and offer further employment opportunities to our youth,” President Akufo-Addo said at the commissioning April 17, 2024.
The K1TPP is the decommissioned Ameri Power Plant which had been relocated to Kumasi to provide stable power to the middle and northern belt of the country.
The phase one of the plant has a capacity of 150 megawatts (MW). The President said the commissioning of the plant was a demonstration of the government’s quest to provide sustainable electricity for the entire nation.
He said the government was committed to delivering affordable and reliable electricity to drive the industrialisation agenda of the country and “to position Ghana to become a net exporter of electricity in the ECOWAS region.”
K1TPP: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with renaming AMERI plants – Energy Analyst
