Former Deputy Minister of Power under the erstwhile Mahama administration, John Jinapor has slammed government for blaming the recent power outages on the road construction on the Pokuase-APC road.

According to the the Member of Parliament for Yapei/Kusawgu, government must be candid in explaining the reasons for the recent power outages.

He says all explanations provided by the government so far are palpably false as the blackouts recently experienced across the country is due to a huge financial burden in the energy sector.

This week marked the fourth time in three years that Ghana has faced near-total grid shutdown, a situation government blamed on the disruption from the construction of the road interchange at the Pokuase-APC junction.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, John Jinapor insisted that the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) must be truthful to Ghanaians and admit that the power rationing has become necessary due to the debt owed by major players in the power distribution chain.

He said the construction of the road interchange as claimed by the government was far halted before the beginning of the blackouts.

“Because you don’t have money, today when we are experiencing ‘dumsor’, you tell us that the very work that has been halted is responsible for the load shedding. It doesn’t make sense.”

“There are persistent power outages because we are not paying for the power we consume. We are running huge losses. Let us take a holistic approach and concede that there are serious financial issues and let’s all come together to see how we can resolve these challenges. We can’t continue to blame this problem on tripping. If you knew you were going to do an upgrade and it is going to affect transmission, it would have been proper to issue a schedule ahead of time. This is an attempt to deceive the people of Ghana. They are having a major challenge and this government should agree, concede and let’s help resolve the challenge”, he added.