A report by ABC News Ghana indicates that Workers of Ghana Grid Company Ltd. (GRIDCo) are hinting of a possible return to the era of intermittent power outages (dumsor) if government does not settle its outstanding debt to the company in the shortest possible time.
According to the staff of the company, the government of Ghana owes the company to the tune of GHS 900 million, a situation which is greatly affecting the operations of GRIDCo.
This revelation was made by the President of the Senior Staff Association of GRIDCO, Mr. Raphael Kornor during their May Day celebration on Wednesday. According to the President of the Association, if government fails to heed to a two-week ultimatum to settle the outstanding arrears, the country will be plunged into darkness.
At the just held May Day celebration on Wednesday, some workers of GRIDCo held placards to register their dissatisfaction with government over the inability of the company to fully perform its functions due to the huge debts owed it by government.
Some of the inscriptions on these placards read: “GRIDCo is bleeding,” “ECG/Valco debt killing GRIDCo,” “No GRIDCo, No 1D1F,” “Energy sector without GRIDCo is useless,” “GRIDCo is viable; goverment pay us our ESLA debt,” among others.
Speaking to Joynews in an interview closely monitored by ABC News Ghana, President of the Senior Staff Association of GRIDCo said “ECG and VALCO takes majority of our power, and government promised to pay all those debts under the legacy debts so these things are having a serious effect on our operations. By 15th May, we are expecting to hear something or else we have other options on the table and we will make sure the government listens to us because we cannot live in perpetuality.”
Commenting the on possibility of returning to the dreaded dumsor, Raphael Konnor said, “all that we are saying is that, government give us our money. We are viable and we need our monies to facilitate our operations. We are doing adhoc maintenance instead of routine and it all borders on cashflow. We have about fourteen thousand (14,000) transmission towers, over 200 high capacity transformers which need to be maintained at periodic intervals and for us if these things are not done, it has a ripple effect on the delivery of our services”
