ECG apologises for dumsor, assures customers of better service

Accra, Ghana - The Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana Samuel Dubik Mahama, has offered an apology to affected customers for the recent "Dumsor" power outages.

In a televised interview on Channel One TV's "The Point of View," ECG's Managing Director, Samuel Dubik Mahama, acknowledged the negative impact of the intermittent power outages on Ghanaians and apologized for the inconvenience caused.

Mahama explained that despite efforts by the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) and other stakeholders, ECG faced challenges in issuing a load-shedding timetable due to generation issues, making it difficult to transmit power consistently to customers.

The Managing Director assured the public that ECG is working to address the issues and has no intention of disregarding its customers.

“There were challenges on the generation side…don’t forget, our main aim is never to take customers for granted. And at this point, I would like to say a big sorry to our customers. I know it caused a lot of hardships for some of them. I know the uncertainty destabilised a lot of families, with how they were taking care of their kids.

“But I want them to know for a fact that we not selling electricity is a loss in revenue. So, we have no reason not to supply power if we have it,” he told host Bernard Avle.

The ECG Managing Director commended the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) for completing routine maintenance tasks efficiently and ahead of schedule.

“One of the things that was very important around that time was the number of power plants that had shut off for routine maintenance…I must take this opportunity to thank all the IPPs who had problems within that period, the speed at which they moved by getting the requisite experts to fix the problem was remarkable," he stated.

“They had maintenance issues, at some point, a plant like let’s say CEN Power had a gas valve issue, you don’t expect me to run a power plant when a gas valve is not performing. That means I’m going to blow up an asset that is worth about how much? Hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added.

The apology comes after GRIDCo reported the situation to the former Energy Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, due to ECG's inability to provide a load-shedding timetable.

Source: Lead News Online