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ECG outages: Paying for destroyed appliances through the ‘nostrils’
The ‘proper dumsor years’ are gone. And during those ‘debilitating years’, power outages ‘engineered’ by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), somersaulted straight to the ‘dogs’.
And the ‘dogs’ ‘ensnared’ by consistent darkness and restlessness, barked consistently, to apparently ‘scare’ ‘dumsor’ but ‘dumsor’ was not perturbed at all.
‘Dumsor’ kept on wreak horror and havoc on humans, homes, houses, schools, companies, factories and many other businesses in the Republic of Ghana.
Eventually, when ‘dumsor’ was ‘arrested’, it was unable to fulfill the ‘difficult’ bail conditions, so it was kept at the Ankaful Maximum Security Prison.
And occasionally, when ‘dumsor’ is provoked ‘by the powers that be’, ‘dumsor’ will break jail and rush into ‘selected towns and cities’ of the country , to continue its action on any ‘innocent’ thing that stands in its way; including expensive electrical appliances.
And so it came to pass that, just recently, ‘dumsor’ escaped again from the Ankaful Maximum Security Prison and ‘rushed’ to the Ashanti Region, with ‘fury’.
And without any regard to His Majesty, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, ‘dumsor’ ‘nakedly’ ‘stormed’ the Manhyia Royal Palace and turned it upside-down; destroying all the expensive electrical appliances of the Great Asante King.
Apparently having ‘researched’ into ‘Ashanti war-history’, ‘dumsor’ first conquered the ‘vassal states’ of Ashanti before eventually ‘laying siege’ on Manhyia Royal Palace, thus, ‘attacking’ and ‘wrecking’ Otumfuo’s expensive electrical appliances with ‘venom’ and ‘vengeance’.
Indeed, Otumfuo has not been a happy man at all. He has expressed his dissatisfaction about the recent power outages in his kingdom.
Speaking during a recent courtesy call on him by the Energy Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the Asantehene announced that the intermittent power outages had destroyed his electrical appliances.
“I have been experiencing power outages recently. The light goes off and comes back without caution” , Otumfuo told the Energy Minister, stressing that, “all my appliances have been damaged because of the outages.”
Responding, Dr Prempeh attributed the recent power outages in the region to a fallen telecommunication mast that destroyed two towers belonging to the Ghana Grid Company earlier in November.
He, however, assured residents that the Energy Ministry was working hard to resolve the problem.
Apart from the Ashanti Region, there have been power outages in some parts of the country, too. They included the Central and the Greater Accra regions. And the outages affected many companies and residential homes.
Reportedly, the effects of the ‘dumsor war’ on Ashanti , were remarkably ‘devastating’, as indigenes and residents in the region also complained loudly.
Akwasi Boadi, 45, a resident of Suame in the vicinity of Kumasi says: “It is not only the Asantehene whose electrical appliances are damaged by the ‘dumsor’ that hit the Ashanti Region.
“I, myself, and many others have lost a lot. All the sophisticated electrical equipment I recently received from my brother based in Sweden, have been damaged by the ‘dumsor’.
“And the ECG is not telling us anything. They keep on destroying our things without paying for them. And such things are very expensive to repair.”
Sixty-two-year-old Mercy Konadu and a resident of Asafo in Kumasi also says all the electrical appliances in her entire household are damaged by the ‘dumsor’.
According to Mercy Konadu: “I hear the ECG has compensated the Asantehene for the damage caused by the ‘dumsor’ to his properties.
“If that is true, then for once, they have been a very responsible institution in Ghana. Always, ECG allows ‘dumsor’ to destroy our things without paying for them.
“People like us, who are nobodies, how can ECG or Ministry of Energy identify us, so as pay us compensation for the damage caused by ‘dumsor’ to our properties? “
Mercy Konadu says, ‘dumsor’ has been inflicting hardship on her household, “because anytime it happens, we have to pay through our nostrils to repair some of our gadgets, as we throw away the others, that cannot be repaired.”
Eugene Opoku Mensah is 52 years old. He is a resident of Bantama in Kumasi now. He says he has lived in Germany for over 20 years and during his stay there, no part of Germany experienced ‘dumsor’ for even one day.
“So, in Ghana, what are the real causes of ‘dumsor’ ? And for God’s sake, for how long can this preventable situation be resolved once and for all?
“And what pains me is that ‘dumsor’ destroys people’s properties and ECG and the Ministry of Energy pretend that they are deaf and dumb.”
Opoku Mensah asks:”And so, ECG and Ministry of Energy; if it is true that you have compensated the Asantehene, what should the others do to claim their compensation?”
Contact email/ WhatsApp of author: asmahfrankg@gmail.com (0505556179)
BY G. FRANK ASMAH
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
