Residents of Manya Krobo and Yilo Krobo in the Eastern Region who spent days of poor business activities and nights of heat and darkness have spoken of their relief as power was restored to the area on Sunday after close to a week in the dark.
Many suburbs of the area, prior to the power outage had suffered erratic power supply for about two weeks before the December 6 shutdown with the situation being blamed on technical faults.
The Company 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.
Nana Yaw who runs an electrical shop like many others had no power from 7pm Monday night, the 6th of December. To their relief however, power was restored at 4:20 pm on Sunday, December 12, sparking brief moments of spontaneous jubilation.
During the week without power, many business owners including barbers, cold store operators, artisans, drinking bar operators, etc. had no option but resort to the use of generators to power their work.
A bag of sachet water shot up from GH¢2.50 to GH¢7 and 30p for a sachet as a result of generator use for power.
Despite power being restored, many parts of the Krobo area including parts of Mampong and Agomanya are still without light after three weeks in the dark with a transformer fault being blamed for the long outage.
Mohammed Arafat, a boutique owner who expressed relief at the development said the people were ready to comply with the terms of the ECG.
“We felt bad when the lights were off but now, we’re okay and we’ll do what the ECG wants us to do,” he said.
He however expressed regret at the nosedive effects of the outage on his business. He said, “Without the light, we couldn’t effectively run our businesses, everything was slow. We couldn’t do anything, just sitting down without doing any work.”
Nana Yaw who deals in electrical products described receiving the restoration with “joy and ecstasy” but added that, “the lights have really dealt a big blow to us for the last six days but thank God the lights are back and we’re looking forward for better days ahead as far as ECG, VRA and Krobo Odumase are concerned.”
According to him, he suffered great losses during the outage due to low patronage.
Hayford Angmor, also an electrical shop operator criticized the ECG for “taking off the lights”. He said despite the existing differences with its customers, the power distributor could have found an amicable way of resolving the problem instead of the blackout.
Asked how the outage affected his work, he noted, “Definitely, businesses have been affected. For me, I’m cool with whatever losses I’ve incurred but those who are operating the cold stores, their businesses were badly affected.”
Derrick Effah, an over the counter practitioner who described the return of the power as good news however said the outage affected his business and sales.
