fbpx

Dumsor: Is This The End Of Power Cuts In Ghana Or A Year-End Gaffe?

Dumsor: Is This The End Of Power Cuts In Ghana Or A Year-End Gaffe?

Ghana’s Power Minister declared that a three-year long power rationing program dabbed ‘Dumsor’, that had left many businesses and city dwellers without electricity for as long as 48-hours, had ended.

Kwabena Donkor, who has come under a lot of pressure to resign if the loadshedding doesn’t end this year, said on Wednesday that the electricity load shedding programme in the West African nation had “been brought to an end”, but did not explain how this had been achieved.

“The Ministry takes this opportunity to express profound gratitude and appreciation to the entire citizenry and resident of Ghana for their forbearance and understanding during the difficult times,” Donkor said in a statement.

President John Mahama promised in February to fix the problem by the New Year and, in a measure of the political seriousness of the issue, Reuters reported.

The West African nation has suffered from power shortages for over three years forcing most businesses and homes to depend to diesel powered generators.

But the burden of running this generators has most of the time left many without electricity for hours at a time.

The power outages, which are the worst in Ghana since independence, have been so common to a point citizens have nicknamed the country’s President John Mahama “Mr Dumsor”, meaning “Mr on and off”, a name the president has acknowledged and laughed about.

Electricity shortage in Ghana has been occasioned by years on underinvestment and poor management of oil revenues in the west African country and now threatens to melt down one of Africa’s shining economies.

According to a report by BBC News, nurses in hospitals in Ghana have been reduced to delivering babies using mobile phones light.