Breaking: Dumsor hits Parliament as ECG diaconnects Power over GHc23M Debt
Ghana’s Parliament has been plunged into total darkness over a Ghc23 million debt to the Electricity Company of Ghana.
The development led to a brief interruption in parliamentary proceedings for close to 3 minutes.
Members of Parliament were debating the State of the Nation Address by the president when the lights suddenly went off.
The minority took the floor to chant “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor,” before a standby generator was powered to keep the lights in the Chamber block on.
Sources close to the National Taskforce of the service provider confirmed to newsalertgh.com that they carried out the disconnection to Parliament House and Job 600 – the office complex for Members of Parliament due to the outstanding debt.
This action is part of the ongoing “Operation Zero Balance” initiative by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) task force, aimed at recovering unpaid debts.
Efforts to collect the debt from the legislature had been unsuccessful before the disconnection.
The dumsor happened barely an hour after the minority had called on the power sector to release a timetable of load shedding.
Speaking in an interview, the Member of Parliament for Yapei-Kusawgu, John Jinapor, said, “The minority side has been monitoring the power situation for the past month, and it appears, based on the information available to us, that the power sector is collapsing.”
“Since February 2, there has been persistent and consistent load shedding by the generation companies. Indeed, the load shedding is worsening by the day. The day the president was delivering SONA and boasting, there was some load shedding happening,” he said.
“Today at noon, load shedding will commence again; our investigation indicates that some of our thermal plants are down and there is a lack of fuel causing the load shedding. The handlers of the power sector should do the honourable thing by informing the people of Ghana so they can plan ahead of time.”
Source: NewsAlertGh