Mahama is the only president who resolved the ‘dumsor’

Former NDC President and Flagbearer John Dramani Mahama

Nkwanta North Member of Parliament John Oti Bless has refuted claims that National Democratic Congress (NDC) flag bearer John Dramani Mahama is to blame for the country’s erratic power outages, commonly known as ‘dumsor’ .

He maintained that the inconsistent power supply began during the tenure of former President John Agyekum Kufuor, who tried to fix it with imported generators, although he was unsuccessful.

However, he said the Mahama administration concluded its mandate with a surplus of electricity capacity, leaving the country with around 83% of generational capacity.

Oti Bless highlighted that the NDC flag bearer is the only president who has taken such a step to resolve the energy crisis in the country.

The ranking member of Parliament’s Government Assurances Committee reaffirmed that Mahama is the only president in history to have resolved the energy crisis, despite criticism.

“Dumsor has been there since time immemorial. All heads of state or presidents in the history of this country have suffered from it. Even during the era of President Kufuor, they had to import generators from abroad under the Kofi Adda government.

“But President John Mahama was bold and humble enough, he took responsibility and said he was going to solve it. And he solved it. Before President Mahama left office, we had excess capacity and our generation was about 83 percent. So let us record that President Mahama is the only president in the history of this country who resolved dumsor,” he said, according to citinewsroom.com.

His comments were in response to Dr Opoku Prempeh’s differentiation between current power supply challenges and those that emerged during the Mahama administration.

According to the Energy Minister, the current crisis is different from Mahama’s “dumsor”.

He stated that Mahama’s period was marked by prolonged blackouts with short intervals of electricity, spanning four years.

He added that the current “dum siesie” means short interruptions for maintenance reasons.

“When I entered the ministry, we had gone from 72 to 96 hours of outage with only six hours of electricity. Currently, we are addressing ‘dum siesie’, which is different from ‘dumsor.’

“Dumsor’ was a particular phenomenon of John Dramani Mahama’s presidency. He is the only president who has consistently exposed the nation to power outages throughout his tenure,” he said.

This comment sparked significant public criticism, with accusations of negligence.

SB/AE