Member of Parliament (MP) for the Bawku Central constituency, Mahama Ayariga, has stated that the ongoing power challenges leading to intermittent power supply, also known as dumsor, are partly due to the government’s indebtedness to Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
He, however, revealed that these IPPs are “afraid to talk,” indicating that the power producers do not want to engage in politics.
Speaking to Alfred Ocansey on The Key Points on Saturday, March 30, the Bawku Central lawmaker said, “They just do not have the money to pay, the IPPs are not talking because they do not want to get involved in politics so they don’t talk.”
“But those who know what is happening, when you call and ask them, they would say talk to your people to pay us, he hasn’t told you that he is owed, but just say talk to your people to pay us,” he stressed.
Mr. Ayariga therefore cast doubt on the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia regime as being the people with so much expertise to tackle the country’s economic problems.
He also criticised the government for opposing the Energy Sector Levy Act (ESLA) yet mismanaging the monies accrued from the levy aimed at defraying the legacy debt in the energy sector.
According to him, ESLA was a “strategic thinking, excellent planning which was being well executed by [former] president John Dramani Mahama” but based on “total misrepresentation,” the NPP government told Ghanaians that former president Mahama was responsible for ‘dumsor’.
ESLA Plc, as a public limited liability company, was established in 2017 as an independent Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) primarily to issue debt securities to refinance the energy sector debt.
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Since its inception, ESLA is expected to have generated some GHS10 billion over the period.
“Seven years down the line where there is no demonstrated problem of lack of national generation capacity. There is internally a capacity to generate as much energy as we need. The problem is that because you have mismanaged the finances of this country, you have squandered the monies kept in the Energy Sector Levy accounts,” he said, adding that “the truth of the matter is that some of the [power] producers have it to their limits.”
He emphasised that the IPPs have borrowed so much to keep the lights on for Ghanaians.
Meanwhile, a former deputy minister for energy and MP for the Yapei-Kusawgu constituency, John Abdulai Jinapor, had earlier alleged that the government needs about 50 million US dollars to purchase fuel. He maintained that the current erratic power supply ‘dumsor’ is a financial problem.