ENDLESS BLACKOUTS
…CORRUPTION, INCOMPETENCE MAR JOE LAHAI’S STEWARDSHIP
By Ibrahim Alusine Kamara (Kamalo)
A whopping sum of nearly a billion dollar in total has so far been poured into Sierra Leone’s energy sector from 2018 to date to avail the citizens with reliable supply of electricity for steady human growth and national development, we have gathered.
A report from UNDP indicates that in 2018, 105 MW was available, and World Bank Data suggest that before that time, 15% of the country’s total population had access to electricity while 2.5 of the rural population had access to electricity in 2016.
With an existing ADB/DFID funded project for the transmission, Rehabilitation and expansion between Bo and Kenema that was to be completed in 2020, the country was said to be in good footing in terms of its energy sector, and had there been continued commitment and robust efforts, the country’s electricity crisis would have been a history.
Salone Compass further understands that when the country’s governance changed hands in 2018, the government budgeted $15.6 million in a bid to not just increase electricity generation, enhance the existing thermal plants, but rebuild and enhance the existing distribution networks. This came at a time when development partners had pledged the sum of $43.7 million apart from the $44.4 million MCC grant the country had already clinched in 2015, all for the improvement of the energy sector.
Fast forward in October 2018, the International Financing Corporation signed a $40 million agreement to install a 50 MW solar power plant as it was anticipated that by 2023 the demand for electricity was going to exceed 360MW.
In the same aggressive effort to improve the sector, the International Development Finance Corporation also approved an additional $292 million loan of $412 million loan on May 8, while the ECOWAS further provided another $40 million loan.
It has, therefore, been estimated that these mentioned sums of money and others that form the overall investment in the energy sector over the last six years alone run nearly to a billion dollar.
Observation, however, is that despite all of the collosal sums of money so far pumped into the energy sector, the failures continue to rear up ugly heads to the point that the electricity dilemma not only rages on but has worsened in Sierra Leone.
The backward trend of the energy sector is much to be desired in an impoverished country that craves for robust action in all facets of development. It is even sad that the Karpowership could not serve the electricity demand of people in the city because though the consumers regularly pay for the service, the authorities could not pay the power ship because of official ineptitude and the corruption being entrenched in every nook and cranny of the institutions that are in charge.
The result is that the capital city Freetown continues to be pitched in endless blackouts even as the rains are still active, with the Director General of EDSA, Joe Lahai’s stewardship accused of being the worst harbinger of the energy’s doom in the country.
The sad state of affairs could not even keep the nerves of the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund cool but had, in a public statement on 30th September, raised serious alarms about the glaring mismanagement of the electricity sector resulting in huge loss of income at EDSA.
Meanwhile, the government has just signed for the MCC grant to help millions of people in Sierra Leone gain access to affordable and reliable electricity which more than 75 percent of the population lacks.
But the worry by many Sierra Leoneans now is over the would-be fate of the just-signed $480 million MCC compact fund with the alleged incompetent and or corrupt individuals parading the line institutions of the energy sector as its officials.