Mr Jinapor said in a Facebook post on Friday August 26 that “For the record, when I was appointed Deputy Minister for Energy and Petroleum, the Yapei-Kusawgu Constituency had only 4 towns connected to the national grid (i.e., Buipe, Yapei, Sankpala and Kusawgu).”
“By dint of hard work, the constituency currently has about 100 communities connected to the national grid as part of an aggressive national electrification programme under the John Mahama NDC administration.”
“So, Mr. President, if we have only 17 towns yet to be connected to the national grid, the critical question you should answer is what have you done so far to complement what you inherited? You cannot be sleeping on the job and blame others for your own failures.”
Speaking at Yapei in the Central Gonja District of the Savannah region on day two of his visit to the region, Mr Akufo-Addo intimated that, in his lifetime, the Yapei-Kusawgu constituency has had two lawmakers.
They are Alhaji Amadu Seidu, who he described as his former colleague in parliament and John Jinapor who is also a former deputy minister of energy. However, the President said 17 communities in the constituency are still not connected to the national grid.
John Jinapor also said: “More importantly, at national level, the NDC Government expanded access to electricity from 50% to 83.24%. This can be confirmed in Paragraph 463 of the 2017 budget as presented by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta: “Under rural electrification, 1,212 communities were connected to the national grid, increasing the national electricity access rate from 80.5 percent to 83.24 percent”.
“President Akufo-Addo since assuming office and despite receiving over GH¢20 billion in ESLA Revenues, has only increased the access rate by a paltry 3%— from 83.24% to 86.63% as captured under Paragraph 810 of the 2022 budget: “In pursuit of H.E. The President’s aspiration to achieve universal coverage of electricity by 2024, a total of 162 communities were connected to the national grid thereby increasing the national electricity access rate from 85.17 percent in 2020 to 86.63 percent in 2021.”
The President made this pronouncement while criticizing the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for neglecting some parts of the country whenever they are in power.
