Essipon power outage - ECG explains cause

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has explained that the power outage at the Essipon stadium on Monday just before the Mali-Benin football match was neither deliberate nor any act of negligence on the part of the ECG. Mr Ben Nyatefe, Western Regional Director of the ECG, speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview at Takoradi on Tuesday, said the stadium was running on two mobile generators supplied by the Ministry of Energy just before the start of the tournament. Each had a capacity of 1.2 megawatts, more than enough for the stadium which required a lower capacity. Mr Nyatefe said during the match one of the generators that had been successfully tested the previous day developed a fault and went off. The organisers, therefore, shifted the load to the second generator while power from the ECG was on a standby. He said at the commencement of the second game the second generator also developed a fault at 19.25 hours and within a minute, ECG's standby power was switched on. The lighting system around the stadium that had supply from the ECG was not affected during the power outage. The ECG had assisted in the installation and testing of the generators on Saturday and Sunday and were found to be running without problems. Electrical power was finally restored to the stadium at 19.41hours. Mr Nyatefe said the ECG was not in control of the generators and the lighting system at the stadium but only provided men on a standby in case of power outage. He said it usually took the floodlights seven minutes to beam fully. Mr Daniel Adjei-Larbi, Public Relations Manager of ECG, said the company services that stadium through two 11 kilovolts circuits, A 31 and A 57 and these were capable and firm circuits that could withstand any pressures. He said the incident was unfortunate and appealed to the media to consider the interest of the nation during such incidents. Assistant commissioner of Police (ACP) Mr Robert M. Azu, Acting Western Regional Police Commander, in another interview said the power outage was an embarrassment to all. Speaking to the media he ruled out sabotage as being speculated by certain people. "No person could deliberately have done that and all should know this," he stressed. Mr Azu said a series of educational forums that had been held for residents of the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis prevented them from running or panicking when the lights went off. "If they had panicked and attempted to run, it would have been disastrous for the entire tournament.” He thanked the numerous supporters for their comportment and the vigilance. ACP Azu said the security agencies were ready and vigilant and would ensure that sanity prevailed at all the stadiums nationwide during and after the tournament.