John Mahama, the former president has said it was unfair on the part of Ghanaians to label him ” Mr dumsor” during the peak of the power crisis during his tenure.
Mahama was nicknamed Mr dumsor after the popular word for the power outages at the peak of energy crisis in Ghana which led to the collapse of many businesses.
Asked by Face off host Samson Kasumba on Uganda-based NBS Television, wether the Mr Dumsor label was unfair?
Mahama replied “Yeah it was , what you are referring to is the actual energy crisis Ghana went through, the actual course of the energy crisis was the lack of investment over the years by previous governments in generation, Ghana’s consumption in terms of electricity consumption had been rising about 12 percent per annum,
“But the investment in additional generation had been very slow, so we got to a stage where we were demanding and consuming more electricity than we were generating, We had Akosombo Dam we though it will last forever unfortunately it didn’t.”
“And so we were consuming like 2600 megawatts and our production was 2300 megawatts , and so we had to go through period of outages, now what did I do, I took responsibility, I didn’t blame previous governments, I said yes you call me Mr dumsor ,I inherited this problem but I take responsibility for it , and so I said I am going to fix this , by 2015 I had added additional 300 megawatts , I was actually accused of adding more megawatts,” he added.
Mahama says despite his effort to add excess generation, Ghanaians are gradually experiencing the dumsor era again under the current government.
Fred Dzakpata
