You’re In Power, Keep The Lights On As We Did – Herbert Krapa

The immediate past Energy Minister, Hebert Krapa, has challenged the new Mahama government to keep the lights on as the outgone Akufo-Addo government did.

Reacting to a statement by the Co-Chairman of the Transition Team sub-committee on Energy and Natural Resources, John Jinapor in which he claims that “massive load shedding looms as Ghana’s fuel stock depletes”, Mr Krapa said it is preposterous for Mr Jinapor to blame former President Akufo-Addo and his government for the so-called fuel challenge.

Mr Jinapor had stated that, the Akufo-Addo government failed to make necessary fuel procurements despite repeated warnings and calls to do so. “I have bad news for you. As of today, the confirmation we are receiving is that we have only five hours’ worth of fuel left. If you look at the heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel, we don’t have enough to last two days. So, in two days’ time, we are likely to run out of fuel,” he stated.

Wrong
But, Mr Krapa said Mr Jinapor is wrong. “Load shedding does not loom. It is caused either by technical or emergency power generation issues or a lack of competence in managing the power sector. Mr Jinapor seems to be haunted clearly by the latter,” Krapa stated in a statement issued on Tuesday evening.

Leaving office
The former minister continued that by the time of leaving office, President Akufo-Addo’s government left in stock, light crude oil which Cenpower currently generates power with, whilst AKSA continues to take delivery of heavy fuel oil which it generates power with.

“This fact is easily verifiable with a phone call to both power plants. The responsibility of the new administration is to not only procure more liquid fuel to keep the lights on, whenever liquid fuel becomes required to complement gas supply, but also plan competently to avert power supply disruptions. We did it and they can do it too, if they can,” he said.

Get to work
He added: “The NDC government should get to work as we did, the reason we kept the lights on for eight years, regardless of the difficult times, and stop the needless finger pointing. That is not the way we kept the lights on.”