Member of Parliament for Bongo, Edward Bawa has provided specifics on the steps taken by the government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to address the frequent blackouts, or dumsor, that the people call power outages.

When Ghanaians encountered a power outage during the Mahama administration, the government came under heavy fire. However, a few NDC leaders assert that they dealt with “dumsor” prior to the end of their tenure.

Edward Bawa claimed in a Face to Face interview on Citi TV that the Mahama administration fixed every initial issue that was causing the power outages.

He stressed that in 2015, problems including generation capacity, fuel security, and unpaid cumulative legacy debts were resolved.

“Essentially, by the close of 2015, the major issues that had to do with the power sector had been dealt with. When the NDC came, obviously these problems were still there waiting to strike again. Unfortunately, it reared its head in 2013, when we had a problem with the breached pipeline and that told us that we needed to do something about our fuel security properly. By the close of 2015, we had procured enough generation power to be able to deal with the immediate cause of “Dumsor”.

“Generation was the immediate issue, that part by the close of 2015, actually had been dealt with. There was also a financial aspect of it which was dealt with, particularly just the end of 2015 and 2016. We were dealing with the debts and then by the close of 2015, we had also dealt with the fuel security issue because we had then brought on board Atuabo Gas Plant that was going to utilize our gas.”

According to Bawa, the government created ESLA in order to pay off legacy debts that resulted from unallocated subsidies and utility inefficiencies.

“It was the financial aspect of it which had to do with the energy sector levy. The legacy debt and so the ESLA was to retire the legacy debts. The NDC government under John Mahama felt that in five years, it would be able to retire the debts and also ensured that no new debt was piled up, so Compact 2 was brought in.”