Amidst a tragic power outage incident leading to the loss of a newborn's life at the Tema General Hospital, Nana Yaa Jantuah, former Director of Public Relations and External Affairs at PURC, has demanded the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to promptly release a timetable to manage the ongoing erratic power supply (Dumsor) plaguing parts of the country.

Jantuah stressed the importance of a timetable to guide ECG in prioritising critical areas such as hospitals and locations with vulnerable populations, as mandated by law.She highlighted that a structured timetable could have prevented the heartbreaking incident at the Tema General Hospital, where a nursing mother lost her three-day-old baby due to medical equipment failure during a power outage.

The grieving mother, Rashida Abubakar Tetteh, recounted the devastating moment when doctors informed her of her child's inability to survive without functional equipment powered by electricity.

“I went to visit my son, but I didn’t see him. I was waiting outside when one doctor came to inform me that they were sorry, but due to the lights out, my child could not survive because the incubator was not working.

“The lights went off on Tuesday evening. No staff has spoken to me, and they haven’t said anything to me,” Rashida Abubakar Tetteh stated.

In response to the incident, Nana Yaa Jantuah emphasised the necessity of ECG's intervention through a clear timetable, ensuring essential services remain uninterrupted during power disruptions.“The timetable will be good. I think what happened at the Tema General Hospital, if there was a timetable and it is with the ECG, the ECG knows the areas of their transformer and the feeders so they would take the hospitals and the critical places out.

“The law says you don’t have to put off the lights of the hospitals, a school, old people’s homes or even if there is a sick person in an area and it is known and the person needs electricity to store their drugs, who is beyond the age of 70 years, you don’t have to put off their light. But because it is being taken off at the bulk supply point over vast areas, GRIDCo who is doing it does not know who and who are where because they don’t deal with the customers, ECG deals with the customers so if they are taking off the power from their end certainly, they will know which areas to take, they will know which are the critical areas and which are not.”

Contrary to initial reports of fatalities linked to the outage at Tema General Hospital, the hospital has refuted these claims, assuring the public of its continued commitment to patient safety despite operational challenges caused by power interruptions.

As the nation grapples with the Dumsor crisis, stakeholders urge swift action from ECG to mitigate further disruptions and safeguard critical services.