The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has paid $8 million to the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) to avert potential power outages.
The government must pay another $12 million by the end of this week, or WAPCo could be forced to cut off gas supplies again.
On Thursday, October 26, the country lost more than 500 megawatts of electricity and suffered a power outage due to limited gas supplies from WAPCo.
In an interview with JoyNews’ PM Express On Monday, October 30, ECG Managing Director, Mr Samuel Dubik Mahama, said the government was determined to clear the debt by the end of this week.
Responding to concerns that the country would descend into “chaos”, he promised that a sudden collapse of power would “never happen again because we have the right mechanisms in place”.
“With our arrangement, we will soon be repaying our exposure to WAPCo. We hope to get to zero by the end of this week. As we speak, they have received over $8 million.” I think so, hopefully by the end of the week it will be zero,” he said.
He said once ECG clears its debts, it will develop a sustainable plan for how to make regular payments to WAPCo.
On Thursday, October 26, power outages occurred in some areas of the country.
Also read:
Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) said in a statement that the outage was due to limited gas supply to Tema, resulting in a shortage of 550MW during peak hours.
The shortage caused a power outage that Thursday night. GRIDCo has since apologized for the inconvenience.
Also read:
Subsequently, on Saturday, October 28, ECG and GRIDCo announced in a joint statement that power restoration had been successful as a result of the resumption of gas supply from Takoradi to the Tema power station.
Disclaimer: The views, comments, opinions, contributions and statements made by readers and contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policies of Multimedia Group Limited.