Former Minister for Energy, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, who is also the deputy Minority Leader has described as very heartbreaking, the failure of the Nana Akufo Addo-Bawumia led government to leverage on the gains made in the power sector before the NDC handed over power to them in January 2021.
According to him, the power crisis or dumsor Ghanaians are enduring today is self inflicted.
Mr Buah, who is also the MP for Elembelle explained that, then Mahama administration, which was bastardized during the peak of the power crisis in 2014 and 2015, took bold decisions to fix it.
“It was not easy. We had sleepless nights but the visionary Mills-Mahama government was focused. Learning from the past, which saw very less investment by previous governments, in the power sector to match projections by the Energy Commission, we brought in the Ameri Plant, the Karpowership and others. We were able to convince Independent Power Producers who at the time were sceptical because of risk factors. We also invested heavily in the Atuabo Gas Plant to address the flaring of gas. Today its feeding the thermal plants and saving the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually” – he emphasized.
He said aside these, the Mahama Administration which faced the power crisis head-on, introduced the Energy Sector Levy, ESLA to address the legacy debts, crippling stakeholders in the value chain and lobbied the US government for Compact II of the Millenium Challenge Account, a whopping $500m to retool the ECG to reduce commercial losses affecting the company’s operations.
“But this government did not only mess up ESLA by collateralizing it, resulting in the heavy indebtedness to IPPs, but could not fully harness the US money because of the fraudulent PDS which made the Americans angry”.
The former Energy Minister, blamed the return of dumsor to pure mismanagement, inability to pay for fuel to produce electricity and described as shameful attempts by government and ECG to cover-up.
He however assured that the next NDC government, will put in the necessary steps to reverse the situation to boost confidence in the business community for economic growth.
