Business operators in the Yilo Krobo and Lower Manya Krobo Municipalities of the Eastern Region have appealed to the Electricity Company of Ghana Volta (ECG) to restore power supply to the area as soon as possible to save them further loss.
According to the business owners who spoke to GhanaWeb from communities such as Agormanya, Odumase-Krobo, Somanya, Kpong, etc. the total shutdown of power is adversely affecting their businesses.
Their appeal comes in the wake of rampant power outages in recent times worsened by a total power shutdown by the power distributors on Monday.
The ECG has not given any timelines to fix the outage.
The residents accuse the power producers of deliberately shutting down their power to punish them following recent differences with them.
However, the ECG in a press statement Tuesday attributed the shutdown to “activities of unscrupulous persons overloading some transformers which have destroyed several others within the communities.”
It said it had no option but to shut down the feeder at the bulk supply point directly feeding the communities in order to protect its network, lives and property.
Medical Director at the St. Martin’s De Porres Hospital which has been without power for three weeks now, Dr. Stephen Kusi said the facility was spending tens of thousands of cedis on fuel to power its power plant to run the facility.
Most of the business owners in an interview said they spent about GHC100 a day buying fuel to run either privately owned or hired generators.
An iced-cream depot operator, Enoch Teye in an interview with Ghanaweb reiterated the importance of electricity to the business and said they were losing their customers as sales had gone down.
“Currently, we’ve been having the problem of light off, power comes on and it goes off. Even as I speak to you I’ve hired a generator which costs me petrol of about GHC120 a day so actually, we’ve been affected.
A printing press operator, Moses Korlie also said, "we're not finding it easy at all, you know we do printing press over here and everything about printing is light so since we have not had light for about four days now, work has not been easy at all.”
To save fuel, he said he runs the generator as and when customers walk in for their services. According to him, “What we do is when a customer walks in, you on it, you work for the person and you off it again.”
A DSTV operator, Wise Dogbetor similarly expressed frustration at the situation. GhanaWeb reporter Michael Oberteye on a visit to the centre on a UEFA champions league night observed that, unlike the regular situation where many football lovers thronged the centre to watch their favourite games, just about a quarter of the numbers were there.
The operator blamed the situation on the security threat posed to the fans by walking through the darkness and said his customers preferred to stay home instead.
“As it stands now, I’d say it is having a whole lot of effect on us [because] the people are not willing to move out of their various homes to the game centre and also cost of generating power to be able to power the machines,” he lamented bitterly.
They are thus calling on the ECG and government to come to their aid to save their businesses.
