The Chief Executive Officer for the Africa Energy Consortium Kwame Jantuah has called for immediate and urgent financial investment into the country’s energy sector to forestall power challenges.
His call follows a revelation by the Energy Minister Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh that parts of the country will experience systematic power cuts in May as concerns continue to heighten over the energy situation in the country.
Speaking to Starr News, the former PIAC Vice-Chair said the government must be candid with the ordinary Ghanaian in demanding citizens pay more for power to enable the state to invest properly in the sector.
He said “the question that needs to be asked is, do we have the wherewithal to invest in our power sector? Do we need to look at the entire situation again? I think we’ve gotten to the stage where we need to come full square to the Ghanaian and tell the Ghanaian the way this sector is going if we do not get cash injection in there, it can create problems that can collapse the industry and so we have to brace ourselves to be ready to pay more.
“That’s the way I see it, lets call a spade a spade.”
He further noted that the challenges we are going through have got to do with money. The power sector is not a sector you play with, it’s not a cheap sector. You need investment, it needs continuous maintenance of the equipment, both distribution and transmission, and even on the generation side. We are lucky we have quite a site of gas in our oil fields. But when you look at the other sides, the distribution and the transmission we need is the money.”
Mr Jantuah also disagreed with the notion that the country is not back to Dumsor. According to him, as far as lights are not staying on, Dumsor is back.”
“When we had what you described, where the lights on or off. The lights were off. What is happening today, the lights are off. If you are looking at it in terms of duration, but it’s experienced throughout the country. So, I beg to differ if anybody says this is not Dumsor.”
