The Minority in Parliament has urgently warned of a potential severe electricity crisis in the country owing to the government's outstanding $20 million debt owed to the West African Pipeline Company (WAPCo).

This information comes in the wake of persistent power disruptions experienced in various regions.

Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), in a statement released on Thursday, October 26, clarified that a shortage of gas supply had resulted in a 550MW power deficit during peak periods, which would lead to outages in certain areas.

However, during an interview with JoyNews, Member of Parliament for Bongo, Edward Bawa, attributed the ongoing and frequent power outages to the government's unpaid debt to WAPCo amounting to $20 million.

As a solution, he suggested that the government should engage in discussions with WAPCo to resolve the issue.

“Government must find a way or make an arrangement with as to how that can be paid. If WAPCO begins to have some comfort that government has kept in touch to do the payment, then, I believe that it will work.

“Government must be working to see how they can give WAPCo some level of comfort to continue transmitting gas from Obuasi to Tema or else we are going to be in trouble. If the gas does not come, what it simply means is that the plants cannot run because they use fuel. And if they cannot run, you’d have that 'dumsor','” he said.

“Now the question you would ask is whose liability is it? It is true that if you look at ECG, they do not have a healthy access or guarantee to be able to always go into arrangements with power or gas utilities so GNPC stood in as a guarantee for ECG.

"So ECG has to pay WAPCo but unfortunately because for almost 13 months now the cash waterfall mechanism where all the monies that ECG collects after selling power is put for it to be distributed among the utility mechanism is no longer working, ECG is unable to pay the liability,” he explained.