Ghana gears up for rolling blackouts as loadshedding returns

The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) said on Wednesday that it will begin a four month load shedding exercise with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in some parts of the country.

CAPE TOWN, March 31 (ANA) – The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) said on Wednesday that it will begin a four-month loadshedding exercise with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in some parts of the country.

According to reports on Wednesday, the two power producing companies are expected to provide a time table for the load shedding by next week.

According to Pulse Nigeria, Ebenezer Amankwaah, the corporate communications manager of GRIDCo, said the load shedding schedule will enable both the ECG and GRIDCo to inform their customers ahead of the outages.

Furthermore, in the wake of scheduled load shedding set for April to July, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for Yapei Kusawgu, John Jinapor has alleged that the recent power outages in the country is due to the inefficiencies of the government, reports Pulse Nigeria.

On March 7, the country experienced dumsor, also known as loadshedding, which plunged a majority of the country into darkness.

Ghana’s Chamber of Independent Power Producers (IPP) called for a probe into the power outage. However, the GRIDCo said that a “challenge” to the power system had led to a total system shutdown, resulting in a nationwide blackout.

After the incident early in March, Amankwah has maintained that they have adequate generation capacity to meet demand in the country, reports Pulse Ghana.

Meanwhile, in a separate case, private electrical contractors say they are giving the ECG two weeks to pay private contractors for completed jobs or risk having some of its transformers and other equipment at its sub-stations removed, reports Modern Ghana.

The contractors are accusing ECG of failing to pay them for services they genuinely executed dating back to the days of Power Distribution Services (PDS) in 2019.

According to Xinhua news agency, the West African country experienced a crippling two-year power crisis between 2013 and 2015 that led to lower economic performance over the said period.

African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Naomi Mackay