Electricity supply to the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) was interrupted yesterday, Wednesday April 3, 2019.
For nearly 12 hours, the school had to rely on its only Generator Set to salvage the issue but unfortunately, a larger part of the school community were without electrical power.
Academic activities were greatly affected by the development as the Public Address system in lecture halls were unavailable for use.
Some lecturers had to reschedule their class because of the absence of electrical power.
Students, who were preparing for their Interim Assessments and Projects, had to bear with discomfort at the school’s library as it was not spared from the blackout.
Power was however restored a few minutes after 6pm.
According to some students who reside around the school, the area was without electricity since 2am of Wednesday.
We’re nowhere near
Following frequent incidents of intermittent supply of electricity to most parts of the Greater Accra and Ashanti Region, there are growing concerns that the country has returned back to to the days of “dumsor,” where power is rationed.
Although some Energy tink-tank groups have given reasons to believe that the nation is back to the days of power rationing, the Energy Ministry has debunked these assertions.
According to the Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu, the recent challenges with power supply is due to some technical challenges which will be solved soon.
The Minister for Energy, in an interview with Accra-based CitiNews, suggested that there were challenges of supplying gas to some of the country’s installed power plants particularly the Karpower plant at Tema in Accra.
He said the Ministry, while working to move the plant from Tema to Takoradi where constant gas supply is guaranteed, is looking to find light crude oil to be used to power other plants that are able to be fuel with both light crude and gas.
“Number one is to get some light crude oil as a substitute for some of the plants that are dualized. Like the gas is not available, we should be able to use the light crude oil as a substitute.
We are working day in and day out to make sure that we relocate the Karpower plant from Tema to Takoradi. When that is done, there is going to be sustainable gas supply directly to the power.
We are not yet at all near the era of dumsor. Dumsor is a thing of the past and we need to work to make sure that we don’t come back to the era any longer,” he said.
