As typical of election campaigns, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who was seeking re-election during the 2020 Presidential polls had a tagline that was coined based on what he touted as his achievements as president of the country and the need for the electorate to give him the mandate to serve for a second term.
Believing in his prowess amid claims by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that he has failed woefully, Nana Akufo-Addo said the Ghanaian people have had an opportunity to witness at first hand the impact of the policies and programmes implemented by his government hence should be given four more years to do more.
The slogan and hashtag #4MoreToDoMore worked for the president and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) as they defeated John Dramani Mahama who contested on the ticket of the NDC.
Barely three months after his inauguration, the country appears to be experiencing intermittent power outages known in local parlance as ‘dumsor’, a development that is inconveniencing the general public.
Reacting to the challenge, journalist Bridget Otoo in a social media post taunted the government. She resorted to the use of the magical hashtag but swapped the ‘do’ with ‘dum’ to represent how frequent the power fluctuation has been.
‘This dumsor is a different kind of dumsor’ – NPP’s Buaben Asamoa
Director of Communications for the NPP, Yaw Buaben Asamoa has described the recent intermittent power outages in the country as a “different” one as opposed to that from former president John Mahama’s era.
According to him, the infrastructure for the transmission lines have come under huge pressure hence the reasons for the outages.
Speaking on JoyNews’ NewsFile programme, Yaw Buaben Asamoa urged citizens to be patient with the government and energy sector players as they find workable means to solve the problem.
“This ‘dumsor’ is a different kind of ‘dumsor.’ We must accept it and move on because the infrastructure for transmission has come under huge pressure. It is important that we accept that there is a problem and that the problem is going to be worked on” the communications director said.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Boakye, Executive Director at the African Center for Energy Policy on his part called for critical attention to be paid to the indebtedness owed to power transmission and distribution companies like the Ghana Grid Company Limited and the Electricity Company of Ghana.
“Indebtedness to GRIDCo has been worsening over the years and it is important that we pay special attention to it. If the government continues to use the power sector to play politics, then we are going to be in this situation for a long time. We need a whole strategic look at our power sector,” Boakye cautioned.
Ghana experienced ‘dumsor’ during John Mahama’s tenure as President. This sparked a protest as thousands converged to stage a vigil.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
