In the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi, hundreds of protesters marched against power supply challenges.
The protest, which took place on April 17, 2024, in the evening, was significant as it occurred in the stronghold of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Protesters held placards expressing their frustration at the erratic power supply and frequent unannounced blackouts, popularly referred to as ‘dumsor.’Accra-based Citi FM captioned its photos from the protest on social media, noting that some traders expressed concerns about how recent power cuts have affected their businesses.
The protest, known as the “dumsor vigil,” aimed to convey dissatisfaction and call on the government to promptly tackle the underlying causes of the power problems.
Photos and videos circulated by local news sources depicted a substantial crowd marching along the streets of Kumasi, with some individuals holding lanterns and candles.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the power distributor, has faced ongoing pressure to release a schedule for load shedding in recent months.
However, they have declined to do so, citing overloaded transformers as the cause of the current outages.
This explanation has been rejected by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), which maintains that ECG’s outages constitute a deliberate load-shedding program that was not properly communicated to the public.
