Former Power Minister, Dr. Kwabena Donkor is not enthused by the suggestion to halt electricity exports to Ghana’s neighboring countries amid the current outages.
Dr. Donkor believes that such a decision would be detrimental to Ghana’s interests.
According to Dr. Donkor, discontinuing power exports would not effectively address the underlying issues causing the outages.
Speaking on Top Story, he argued that prioritising Ghana’s domestic needs while neglecting its commitments to neighboring countries would be counterproductive and ultimately harm Ghana’s strategic relations.
“It is unpatriotic for anybody to want to curtail that. Whoever curtails that is doing a disservice to Ghana.”
“Assuming we have a generational shortfall of 300 megawatts, the domestic market which is Ghana can take part of the shortfall and then we can talk to our neighbours and also reduce by some margin what we are contracted to sell to them. That is good neighbourliness. That is what will protect the security of energy supply for Ghana,” he said.
Dr. Donkor’s remarks come in response to recent statements by government officials suggesting that reducing power exports could alleviate the local power supply challenges.
“The President is on top of the issues, and I am even being educated that there is a command that our export of electricity to other countries should be curtailed. The President has an acute sense of the national need than making profits abroad so that is a factor that would come and help,” he stated on JoyNews’ PM Express on April 2, 2024.
The VRA Senior Staff Association has also warned against any such move as it may cause the country to incur huge judgment debt.
The former Power Minister suspects that these considerations are part of plans by the administration to secure political capital at the expense of the country’s diplomatic and cross-border relations as far as energy is concerned.
“Because of this temporal electoral gains that government wants, and I am extremely disappointed. We are jettisoning the strategic national interest of Ghana. We are thinking of making Ghana the real centre of the West African Power Pool arrangement, but if we exhibit such unreliability because of our own partisan interests, we will also endanger that,” he added.
Source: myjoyonline.com
