John Abdulai Jinapor, ranking member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, has asserted that the next NDC government, under the leadership of John Dramani Mahama, will inherit a weakened and anemic energy sector.
He said this when he appeared on TV3’s Hot Issues programme on Sunday, March 24.
According to the former deputy energy minister, he has told the NDC flagbearer, Mr. Mahama, that upon assumption of office, he will inherit “a weakened, anemic, run-down energy sector.”
Addressing the energy sector liability, he said, “As we speak today, the current liability in the energy sector value chain is about 1.5 billion dollars; when you convert that to cedis, that is about 17 billion cedis.”
“And it is piling up and so my fear is a legitimate fear and I have briefed the flagbearer, His Excellency [former] President Mahama, that on assumption of office, he is going to inherit a weakened, anemic, emaciated, run-down energy sector,” he told Keminni Amanor, the host.
He accused the NPP government of engaging in “palliative measures” just to leave behind a weak energy sector for former President Mahama to come and fix it.
“This government is undertaking what we call a palliative measure Just try to manage the system and dump it once again on [former] President Mahama and he has to undertake what we call the heavy lifting once again”, he stated.
He emphasised that former President Mahama, during his tenure, upon briefing on the energy sector, said “he was going to take responsibility” and does not want to blame anyone, indicating that Mahama had a comprehensive plan to tackle the issues.
“He [John Mahama] came to Parliament and told us the state of the energy sector: we had a deficit, we had a generation problem, we had a financial problem, we had a fuel problem, and he was going to solve it comprehensively.”
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“By the time we left office, we had the Atuabo Gas processing plant,” said Jinapor, adding, “but for the Atuabo Gas processing plant, we will incur additional costs of 300 to 400 million dollars every year.”
Meanwhile, the ranking member pointed out that the Finance Ministry has, since August 2023, failed to make any electricity bill payments for institutions like the Armed Forces, the Police, public schools and hospitals.
It would be recalled that the power distribution company, in an attempt to recover some monies owed to them, threatened to disconnect about 90 government health facilities from the national grid.
ECG revealed at the time that the senior high school bill was hovering around GHS 45 million.
“Currently, the schools’ bill is pushing towards almost GHC45m in arrears,” Mr. Dubik Mahama told TV3 in an interview, adding, “Across the nation, put everything together, we should be in the region of GH₵2.5bn debt based on debt stock that I am seeing.”