According to the Minority Caucus in Parliament, the country’s sporadic power outages cannot be solved by selling off the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
The Caucus asserts that the government’s large debts to Independent Power Producers are the cause of the recent wave of power outages.
Dr. Rashid Pelpuo, a member of Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, told Citi News that the government’s poor handling of the energy industry was the reason behind the resurgence of “dumsor.”
“It [dumsor] is not because we have not privatized [ECG] that is why the challenge is coming. It is because the government has mismanaged its responsibility toward the power agencies.
“The government is failing to pay the private sector that is providing the light because the source of power is private sector-driven. The Independent Power Producers, government is unable to pay them their debts. ECG is unable to pay them. So I don’t think that the issue now is about ECG not being privatized.
“We have managed it from independence to now. The challenge is the irresponsibility of the government and the poor management of the governance system of power supply and power generation. So we have a problem, and the heart of the problem is in the governance of this country.”