The effort of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to ensure complete electricity connection in Pusiga, a district in the Upper East Region, is being questioned.
The NDC’s attempt has been described as one aimed at gaining votes during an election time. As a result, it cannot be described as a genuine effort to electrify the entire Pusiga.
The current DCE for the area, Zubeiru Abdulai, made these comments when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show to Mark Smith.
“You know our politics in Ghana. When we are getting closer to the election, you know how passionate the youth are. [They say things like], if you don’t give me light, we will not vote. So the one who is looking for the vote, what do you do? Before 2016, the then government had managed to at least make an attempt to tell the people that I wanted to give you power by sending a few poles here and there. That is how it is. In the entire district, there was an attempt to suggest that they wanted to give them power. So now, they would go back and tell the people that because you voted us out, we couldn’t have continued it for you. If we were there, by now, we would have finished doing it.”
“The reality is that they know they couldn’t have been able to do it. Now, it becomes a burden on us. We have to do everything to ensure that we are able to do this,” he said.
According to the DCE, the current government’s commitment to connecting all unconnected communities to the national grid should not be understated.
“So far, since I took over, we have been able to connect not less than 20-25 communities, and we are still doing more,” he added.
According to the DCE, “by the time we would be going into the next election, we should be able to do, if not all, the majority of the communities in Pusiga. Our aim is to even hit 100 percent but I don’t want to be making so many promises.”
Projects under the rural electrification scheme are handled at the Ministry of Energy. The nationalised system, according to the DCE, means that MMDAs would have to intensify lobbying in order to draw attention to their communities.
“If you are sitting down, if you are not careful, your contractors would not even get the materials,” he said.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
