As to the increased rate at which irregular load shedding occurs in Ghana, I wish to write on this whole DUMSOR SAGA. In this article I am going to refer to Dumsor as a normal word since I found it in Wikipedia and as such I’m not going to put in in quotation marks as other bloggers do.

Dumsor is a Ghanaian word which means ‘off’ and ‘on’. Dumsor as it is widely known throughout the whole of Ghana and the world as a whole refers to the irregular implementation of load shedding schedules. Many Ghanaians assume “dumsor” to be to be load shedding and as such I will like to throw some light on the two dependent phenomena.

Load shedding otherwise known as “Rolling Blackouts” refers to an intentionally engineered electrical power shutdown whereby electricity delivery is stopped for non-overlapping periods of time over different parts of the distribution region.

NB: It is a well scheduled procedure.

Dumsor is an irregular form of load shedding whereby the agreed pattern of distribution is not followed and as such electricity distribution to a particular area is shut down without any announcement being made to the people prior to the shutdown. Usually this might be as a result of a fault with some of the main transformers or a minor fault at some power stations and as such the people are immediately notified and the problem is attended to but here in Ghana, the main reason for Dumsor is as a result of insufficient power and as such electricity needs to be cut in order to prevent a total black-out. This occurs when the Power Operators are not able to follow their suggested power rationing schedule as a result of insufficient power reserves to attend to demands for increasing populations, industries, super-markets, and fall in the level of water in dams, alongside many other reasons.

Load shedding is a common phenomenon which occurs in most developing countries where electricity generation capacity is underfunded and also infrastructure is poorly managed. It is very rare in developed countries where demand is accurately forecasted, adequate infrastructure investment is well scheduled and networks are well managed. Therefore a country like Ghana which is a developing country (which is very weird considering the time we gained independence) will have to endure load shedding on its journey to become a well-developed country. Therefore citizens should be able to cope with an agreed, well scheduled rate of shedding but immediately their thresh-hold is exceeded, you can never expect them to cope like before. One may ask what I mean by exceeding thresh-hold. You exceed the thresh-hold when load shedding becomes DUMSOR.

Dumsor is one of the most irritating and devastating occurrences that can occur within a nation. I say this not just because of the random flickering and flashing of light bulbs or sadness it brings to the faces of the young fellows who want to play games on their ‘P.S.4 or X-box 1’ consoles nor the disappointment it brings to individuals who want to charge their smartphones but rather the kind of damage and retardation it inflicts on the growth of the nation. Every occurrence like this is usually has a cause and I would like to touch on the main cause.

• Cause of Dumsor: The main cause of “dumsor” is the inability of the Nations Power Operators to generate enough power to cater for the demands. Currently the nation produces 1,494 MW as to the current demand peak of 2,300 MW.
              

We all agree that everything needs energy to do work therefore when a country is denied energy, growth is seriously retarded. With this will move to the effects of Dumsor of which include:
? A monthly loss of Ghc 57million due to dumsor makes our future very bleak considering the fact that we are a developing country.
? Ghana’s main Port and harbour lost about $100,000 profit in one hour due to random power cut-offs.
? As if the employment rate in the country is high, Almost 50,000 will lose their jobs at the end of the year if nothing is done.
? Increased rate of Criminal activities.
? Companies have lost important machinery that costs large amounts of money.
? Hospitals rely on torch lights and candles to perform emergency surgeries during a black-out. Very Sad.
? Investors are shying away

With all these given, you can just imagine the kind of damage it is causing the nation in terms of national and economic growth.
 

Dumsor cannot be blamed on the current Government just because of their inability to solve the problem. We must all rather unite in order to find an effective solution to this problem but rather some Ghanaians have decided to sit on their wooden stools and blame it all on the Government forgetting that those who deserve the blame are the current Government’s predecessors. I say this because, many Governments have been in-charge before the current Government and there were many ways in which the magnitude of the current situation could have been reduced considering the kind of information they at their disposal, they (predecessors) could have predicted the occurrence of such a phenomenon (especially for a developing country) but they didn’t and rather decided to concentrate on other mere projects that had no future and even if they did, their impact was relatively small.
  

Others have rather resorted to the use of such a problem in their political campaigns which is quite….. The current Government also has a major role role to play in solving this problem. Even though they haven’t really come up with any sustainable solution other than promises which they could hardly keep, the main question still remains: “Why is it that no government apart from the C.P.P government done anything to solve this problem since they all knew it was coming??”

That’s would be an article for another time. But I hope this nightmare ends soon.