President John Mahama has assured the citizenry of improved power supply following the procurement and deployment of 2,500 new transformers across the country to replace old, overloaded, and obsolete equipment in the electricity distribution system.
President Mahama gave the assurance on Sunday after touring a warehouse of the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) in Tamale to inspect newly procured transformers as part of efforts to address persistent localized power outages in parts of the country.
He said the injection of new transformers into the power supply system formed part of efforts to modernize the country’s electricity distribution network, stabilize power supply, and improve customer response systems.
The President’s visit to the warehouse formed part of his two-day Resetting Ghana Tour to the Northern Region to inspect ongoing projects, cut sod for new ones, and engage with the citizenry.
President Mahama said while the country had expanded electricity access significantly since the launch of the National Electrification Programme in the 1980s, growing population and rapid expansion of communities had outstripped the capacity of many transformers, which were installed many years ago.
He said some transformers, currently in use, were over 22 years old while others had become inadequate to meet rising demands, thereby contributing to unstable power supply in many communities.
He said, “for many years, there has not been a mass replacement of transformers to upgrade their capacities” adding Cabinet approval and support from the Ministry of Finance had enabled the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition to procure the transformers for installation across the country.
President Mahama appealed to the public to bear with temporary outages associated with the transformer replacement exercise, emphasising that planned interruptions would be communicated in advance to affected communities.
He was happy that many of the transformers were being produced locally, saying increased local production would help multiply the economic benefits of the intervention while strengthening the country’s energy infrastructure.
He emphasised the need for improved customer service by the power distribution companies and called for efficient call centres and rapid-response fault repair teams to improve response to consumer complaints.
Mr John Abdulai Jinapor, Minister for Energy and Green Transition, who briefed the President on the power situation across the country, said the major challenge confronting the sector was at the localised distribution level where many transformers were aged, stressed and overloaded, with some in operation for nearly 30 years.
He said after conducting a comprehensive assessment of the system as the first phase, government had moved into the deployment stage involving the installation of high-capacity transformers to replace weak and obsolete ones.
He said, although NEDCo requested 400 transformers for its operational area, the government had allocated 500 transformers to the company.
He said installation had already commenced with 30 transformers scheduled for installation in Tamale this week alongside additional installations at Bole and across the NEDCo’s operational zone to reduce outages and improve supply.
Mr Jinapor noted that government was also implementing similar interventions in other parts of the country, saying, work had started in Accra on primary distribution transformers, while four new primary substations would be installed in Kumasi in the first week of May alongside additional cable works to improve power supply in the Ashanti Region and beyond.
He assured the citizenry that government was determined to address the power distribution challenges and make it sustainable to prevent recurrence of the current difficulties.
GNA
