The arrival of the power barge procured by the government of Ghana from Turkey to augment the shortfall in power supply, might further delay, as the Minister of Power, Kwabena Donkor, has indicated that it is still undergoing custom clearance in Turkey.
[contextly_sidebar id=”7Mkd9Vhrho4AwqpeDc9FwRdcckBVozl2″]The barge was initially expected to arrive in Ghana in three weeks, but the Minister clarified that the arrival schedule will begin after the barge has been cleared by the Turkish customs.
“We are no where within getting to the end of the three weeks timeline; so I again stand by the three weeks; we are still on schedule”he said.
Asked whether the power barge is on its way, the Minister specifically said “It is a process and we made sure that we said it was going to go into quarantine for customs and all other checks to be done; and all that within the three week period so it is not when it sets sail. It must set sail from the dock yard to customs for quarantine, and when all that is complete and any other paper work that needs to be completed is done, within the three weeks window; we expect that it will be in Ghanaian waters.”
The Minister’s revelation comes on the back of a recent report that Ghanaian authorities were still seeking partnership for the provision of fuel for the barge.
The government, in order to resolve the power crisis, which has bedeviled the country, contracted Karpower for the supply of two emergency power plants with the capacity of producing 225 megawatts each.
The first one was expected to be in the country in April, 2015, but due to unexplained reasons, the arrival date was postponed to November.
Kwabena Donkor also touched on the frequent power outages the nation is experiencing in recent times, describing it as a “planned systemic outage arriving out of generation inadequacy. ”
“That does not mean at the end of load shedding, you cannot have outages. With operational outages in your specific area, a transformer can be overloaded and it will give way. You remember his Excellency the President was in US recently and on his visit to LA there was a power outage. Those things can happen but it does not arrive out of planned generation inadequacy.”
Click on audio to listen to the Minister
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By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah