No power outage during election period – VRA, GRIDCO & ECG
As Ghana gears up for the general elections, utility providers including the Volta River Authority (VRA), Gridco and Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) have issued a communiqué assuring the public of “stable, uninterrupted” power supply through out the election period.
The announcement was made at a stakeholders meeting organised by the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC).
According to the communiqué, the stable supply of power will commence on “Wednesday December 5 up to the time the votes are counted and results declared.”
Chief Executive of the Volta River Authority, Kweku Awotwi gave the assurance that amongst other things, “all the generating units at Akosombo and Kpong are running and will run throughout the period. The thermal plants at Tema and Takoradi will be operating at full dependable capacity. All diesel plants will be available as standby for emergency purposes.”
He further indicated, “VRA has agreed on a power plan from Ivory Coast to supply additional power to Ghana and VRA has reduced the power supplied to Togo/Benin to 10MW to make way for more power for the country.”
On their part the power transmitters – Gridco, assured Ghanaians that during the period, “all transmission lines will be in service throughout, all planned outages and planned maintenance activities will be suspended, all the sub-stations would be physically manned, communication lines will be open and accessible.”
Representative of Gridco, George Coleman, also added that “there will be an agreed program with the industries that in case there is any emergency, they should be the first to be taken off the grid.”
Director of Operations at the Electricity Company of Ghana, Tetteh A. Okyne also gave the assurance, “there will be no planned outages, contingency plans will be put in place to manage unplanned outages or faults, well equipped teams will be deployed on standby to attend to any emergencies that may arise during the period.”
He further indicated that “ECG in collaboration with VRA and Gridco is putting in place an effective joint communication strategy to ensure the public is well informed on timely basis during this period.”
The PURC however assured of effective monitoring of power delivery in the country to make sure that the utilities abide by the commitments they have made to the Ghanaian public.
Source:Citifmonline/Ghana
