President Mahama came close to making another promise on when the current power crisis will be solved permanently but quickly made a U-turn, laughed and said he won’t make another promise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t closed the gap but I believe that in the next\u2026 Let me not predict… In the next short while, we will be able to overcome the problem of load shedding.”<\/p>\n
President Mahama has made several promises<\/strong> <\/span><\/a>to end the power crisis and in some cases gave deadlines.<\/p>\n [contextly_sidebar id=”pHWR3LV4uZfDwYxX9S4AVFLHw2MqxuZ7″]Speaking at a press conference at the Flagstaff House in Accra, the President who fell short of giving a deadline was however convinced government will overcome the problem of load shedding in the \u201cnext short while.”<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve learnt to leave it to the technical people to talk about and they are having a major press briefing tomorrow.”<\/p>\n In the last four years, Ghana has not had stable supply of power as demand has outstripped supply.<\/p>\n But in the last two years, the crisis deepened, taking a huge toll on businesses which resulted in\u00a0job losses.<\/p>\n Small scale enterprises have also not been spared the effects of the crisis coupled with an unstable currency that made life more difficult.<\/p>\n Government has in recent times implemented some initiatives to make up for the shortfall in power supply.<\/p>\n These include the Karpower Barge from Turkey which docked at the Tema Port this December to produce 225 megawatts of power.<\/p>\n A second power barge is also expected in the first quarter of 2016.<\/p>\n Government has also secured ten power plants from the UAE-based Ameri Energy, which have since been connected to the national grid.<\/p>\n The Ghana Gas Company upon a request from the Volta River Authority (VRA) shut down its facility at Atuabo on November 23, to allow the AMERI Power Plant, to be connected to the supply of gas.<\/p>\n Ghana Gas is currently supplying gas to the VRA to power its plants despite the VRA\u2019s huge indebtedness to them for the gas supplied over a long period of tim but the company\u00a0warned that it could shut down completely if the VRA did not honour its debt obligations since it needed to fix faulty equipment to supply gas effectively.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Marian Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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