Mahama: Min of Power will end ‘dumsor’ & bring investors

The newly-created Ministry of Power will not put a burden on the budget of Ghana since the same manpower at the Energy Ministry will be transferred there, President John Mahama has clarified.

The president’s decision has been described as unilateral and a waste of state resources by pundits led by the executive director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) Prof. E. Gyimah-Boadu.

But President Mahama has said the same expertise at the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum will be used at the new ministry but with different objectives. He said the ministry was created to attract investors to the country as it works towards constant power supply.

“It is not going to expand expenditure because in the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum people were doing specific duties with respect to the oil and gas sector. I don’t see it increasing in terms of manpower or hiring,” President Mahama said on Good Evening Ghana Thursday evening.

“The advantage is power has become a major issue in Ghana, people are making investment decisions to invest in West Africa based on the availability of power and if we don’t put ourselves up front there to be the major power hub within the sub-region we’ll lose investment to Cote d’Ivore and Nigeria and so we need to take action that will ensure that the power sector is having a 24-hour focus with a minister to ensure that the objective that we have set for ourselves of achieving 5000 megawatts is available.”

Touching on when the 5,000 megawatts target will be realised, President Mahama said: “We’ve signed MoU with General Electric, which will bring 1000 megawatts.

“Collectively between Senet, Asogli and all the others, we are talking about another 1,500 megawatts. When the Kpone plant comes on stream, we should get another 200, 300 megawatts. We were planning for the end of 2016, that was the target but I guess we will scale over, most of these plants I believe should be ready by 2017.”


Source: Ghana/StarrFMonline.com/103.5FM