Ghana runs to Ivory Coast for “Easter power”

Efforts are being made by the country’s power generators especially the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) to get some assistance from La Cote d’Ivoire over the energy deficit of the country, TV3 can confirm.

This is to ease the ongoing loadshedding during the Easter break, an official of GRIDCo said.

Most residential areas and industrial enclaves are undergoing varied loadshedding schedules.

While residential areas endure 24 hours of power outage with 12 hours supply, industries go off 24 hours every two days.

In an interview with TV3’s Sandra Amarquaye on Wednesday, April 1, however, the Systems Control Manager of GRIDCo revealed that the same effort made during the Christmas period is being sought for Easter.

“We are trying to get assistance from La Cote d’Ivoire for them to give us some supplementary power supply,” said Frank Otchere.

He added that: “People are going to see longer duration of power supply than it has been the past weeks.”

Mr Otchere, however, stressed that the loadshedding exercise may stretch into the third quarter of the year but it is likely to subside then.

“I believe that as we go into the third quarter, we will still be shedding load but it could come down a bit because we are expecting that TICO would have come on line.

“In addition to that because of the raining season load will go down.”

The current demand of power, according to GRIDCo, is pegged at 2,080 megawatts (MW) but only 1,564 MW is available.

Ghana has also reduced supply to Togo and Benin from 120MW to 50MW.

What is wrong with Gridco? We need power to run our businesses not for enjoyment. Our businesses are collapsing because of dumsor yet you turn a blind eye but when we get into festive seasons you go begging for megawatts.

Also why are they still supplying power to others while their own people suffer? 120mv could have saved someone's life, it could have saved people's businesses from folding up.