The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Flagbearer, John Mahama, has demanded that the government issue a clear load-shedding schedule and admit that there are “dumsors,” or power outages.
Mahama has called for transparency in response to recent power outages that have occurred across the nation.As part of his “Building the Ghana We Want” Tour through the Upper West, Mr. Mahama spoke at a meeting in Sissala West. He emphasized that people in Ghana are aware of the continued load shedding and just need a schedule that is clear.
As a past president, Mahama emphasized that he educated the public about issues and the actions taken to resolve them while in office.
However, he expressed concern that the current administration has not been as forthcoming in addressing the issue.
“When I was president, if things were not going well, I told the people of Ghana things are not going well and this is what we are trying to do about it. I think my honesty was one of my major problems because I didn’t think I should fool my people. Today every day you sleep and the lights go off and we know that they are shedding load. They have a problem with generation. Some generation assets are down. They have a problem with paying for gas.
“They have a problem with paying for fuel so every day they are shedding between 280 and 480 megawatts of power but they will not give us a timetable and say you will be off today, this one will be off tomorrow because that is what Ghanaians know as dumsor.
“And so we will just put off the light anytime and reduce the number of megawatts so the system won’t go down. But we don’t call it dumsor and so there is no dumsor but we know that it is dumsor,” he stated.