Government Spokesperson and Minister in charge of Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has stated that the Mahama administration inherited a “chaotic and poorly managed” energy sector, emphasizing that resolving the ongoing crisis will take time.
In an appearance on the GTV Breakfast Show, Kwakye Ofosu rejected claims that President Mahama’s return to office has led to a resurgence of widespread power cuts, commonly referred to as dumsor, labeling such assertions as “pure propaganda.”
He noted that on his first day in office, President Mahama convened a high-level meeting to address the major crisis in the energy sector. According to him, when the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration left office in 2016, Ghana had excess energy capacity, a stark contrast to the current situation.
“When we were leaving power in 2016, we had redundant capacity—capacity that we didn’t even need immediately. As I speak to you, capacity meets demand exactly without reserve capacity. If you don’t have that, the system trips frequently, or you need a supply and nothing is left when there’s a breakdown or some emergency. That is why you have those intermittent outages,” he explained.
Kwakye Ofosu highlighted that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is burdened with debt and structural inefficiencies, revealing that the company owes 63 billion Ghana cedis and consistently collects less than it spends to produce power.
He added that the Finance Ministry had to intervene this year with 28 billion Ghana cedis to prevent a total collapse of operations, funds that could have been used to improve livelihoods.
Regarding load-shedding, the minister asserted that there is no formal implementation of power rationing. “There is no planned load-shedding, per se. Otherwise, a timetable will be published. We are not like others who will ask you to go and publish your own timetable. If there is load-shedding, a timetable will be put out so that you can plan your life,” he affirmed.
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