Albatross of energy supply
When members of the Ghana Journalists Association interacted with President John Dramani Mahama at the Flagstaff House last year, he promised he would no longer make any pronouncement on the end to the power crisis because it was becoming an embarrassment to him that all his assurances did not happen. Some of us were, thus, uncomfortable when the President went on his word and made promises, especially after the inauguration of the Bui Power project that the power crisis was over.
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We are back to the days of load shedding although the Volta Lake is not dry, neither has the world run out of crude oil. Indeed, the high cost of crude oil was one of the factors used to justify the upward adjustment in utility prices. However, the shortage in power supply is blamed on nonavailability of gas. So if gas was the critical factor why did that not inform pricing but crude oil prices, just that crude offers the power producers better returns against the interest of consumers?
Despite political assurances, when one listens to the technocrats, one does not get any impression that a functional solution is in sight. Even at the time that the Akosombo Dam dried up, we were able to generate some power from crude oil, which in dollar terms was more expensive than the prevailing prices.
More important, the Volta River Authority (VRA) is one establishment which should make every Ghanaian proud because it relies completely on Ghanaians for its operations. Therefore, when those who speak for the organisation equivocate as to when we should expect stable power supply because of uncertainty about maintenance, that must give us cause for concern. We must be concerned because while some of the big organisations may invest in alternative power sources and redeploy some of their workforce, most small-scale producers, such as tailors and hairdressers are completely put out of work.
That is why the government must take a back seat and allow the power producers and suppliers to answer public queries. Politics cannot comprehensively untie the knot that surrounds the power supply equation.
By now, it is clear that we should begin to hold the utility service providers accountable to the public. Whereas politics cannot be wished away, once government spokespersons and the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) have openly and boldly told Ghanaians that government does not and cannot interfere with pricing of power, then government must not be the one to give assurance to the people about the supply of stable and reliable power.
What we need now in the face of the power shortage is a reliable, dependable and transparent load shedding schedule. It is sometimes intolerable to be told that you will have power at a certain time only to be denied it without any prior notification.
The situation where power goes off and comes back within minutes is not only disturbing but stressful.The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in particular has to improve upon its customer service. It must begin to take the interest and concerns of consumers serious because by some strange circumstances, users of prepaid meters often complain that their units run faster when there are power outages than when supply is normal and regular.
Such an observation must not be dismissed as baseless without some attempt to explain matters to consumers and empathise with them. Sometimes, there is the feeling that the public servants in charge of utility services take things for granted without responsibility for failures because when there is glory, the politicians appropriate it.
In the face of all these, we have not been able to utilise the gas reserves from our oil find because we have been tardy in putting in place the needed infrastructure to exploit the gas into productive and commercial use. Consequently, our oil production has reduced since we do not want to flare the gas and release it into the atmosphere.
The situation of utility price hikes and the concomitant deterioration of supply have become so predictable that the average Ghanaian does not have any confidence in the promise that power supply will ever be fixed.
As we move towards the FIFA World Cup season in June, we will no longer admire or trust anyone ( President Mahama not excluded) ,when they come to assure us that there will be reliable power supply, because we will legitimately feel that even if power does not go off the whole of June and July, it will come back and haunt us from August. We must do something to restore the confidence and trust of our people. We must shed off this albatross.
