There Is No ‘Dumsor,’ We Just Have Technical Challenges Says Ayeh-Paye

Former Member of Parliament for Ayensuano, Samuel Ayeh-Paye, maintains that Ghana is not undergoing intermittent power cuts, colloquially referred to as ‘dumsor,’ despite widespread outages affecting households and businesses.

In recent months, there has been a notable increase in power outages, leading affected sectors to call for a load-shedding timetable.

Energy Minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh, in a media interview in Kumasi last month, strongly refuted the existence of ‘dumsor’ and challenged advocates of a load-shedding timetable to provide evidence for their claims.

During his appearance on The Big Issue on Citi FM and Citi TV, the former Ayensuano MP contended that Ghana currently has adequate installed capacity to fulfill power demands. However, he highlighted technical challenges that impede its full utilization.

“We are having some power outages and according to the power agencies, they are saying that there is no ‘dumsor’ but technical challenges. ‘Dumsor’ happens when you don’t have enough power to produce or supply the exact peak demand that we need.

“As we speak, our peak production is around 3,600 megawatts, and what we get is a little below that and we have a shortfall, and what they [the power agencies] are saying is that the shortfall is not as a result of not having an installed capacity. The calculation is having about 5,000 plus installed capacity.”

Mr. Ayeh-Paye also rejected claims that the power outages are solely attributed to financial insufficiencies in procuring fuel for the power plants and compensating power producers.

“What the [Energy] Ministry is telling us is that the issue is not about us not having money to buy fuel, the issue is about some of the plants being under maintenance and repairs and the ECG is also telling us that they have challenges with their transformers.”