May 18, 2015
Ghana Celebrities Join Call to End Painful Power Outages
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Throngs of Ghanaians thronged the capital Accra this past week but the celebrities in their midst were not the main attraction.
Thousands of citizens, movie stars, civil servant, academics and others took to the streets to protest the government’s failure to end a three-year long electric power crisis.
The energy crisis has crippled business at home and angered ordinary Ghanaians. Currently the electric company provides power for 12 hours out of a 36 hour cycle. Homes are plunged into darkness, refrigerators shut down, as do TVs, water pumps and fans.
“Three years is more than enough to solve this crisis,” said Yvonne Nelson, actress, model, beauty pageant contestant and march organizer. “It’s taking a toll on our livelihood.”
Authorities blame low water levels at the Akosombo Hydroelectric Dam – the main supplier of electricity for Ghana – and a lack of gas to power the country’s thermal plants as the main cause of the crisis.
But commentators point to old and out of date machinery at the country’s three power plants and a demand for electricity that outstrips the supply. The power outages are known locally as “dumsor” – a word in the local Twi language used for irregular power blackouts.
Major employers like Coca-Cola, Cadbury Ghana and a construction supply company have started laying off workers.
About 3,000 workers have already been laid off as a result of the power cuts and as many as 5,000 workers could lose their jobs by September if the situation does not improve, Ghana’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry warned last month.
A bit of Ghana’s colonial history was recalled on The Guardian newspaper’s website by Napolean Abdulai, a disarmament expert. He noted that a nuclear energy project was planned as early as 1961“to exploit nuclear energy for peaceful applications for the solution of problems of national development.” Scientists and technicians from the former Soviet Union were coming to Ghana to oversee the work.
After President Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown, the nuclear project was declared unnecessary by British physicist Sir John Cockcroft although critics said that to accept Cockroft’s recommendations “was to perpetuate backwardness.’
Other projects were dismantled and a number of scientific and technical staff departed.
With citizen restlessness in view, deputy finance minister, Cassiel Ato Forson took pains to assure a reporter that the government had a clear plan to improve the economy and would deliver more than 3,000 megawatts of additional power over the next five years.