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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has commissioned the first phase of the Kumasi 1 Thermal Power Plant (K1TPP) at Anwomaso in the Oforikrom Municipality in the Ashanti Region, with a call on the private sector to make use of government investments in the power sector in the region to promote industrialisation and economic growth.
He said Kumasi, the Ashanti regional capital, was known for businesses and expressed the hope that the private sector would reciprocate the government’s gesture by investing in the area to make use of reliable electricity supply.
“It is my expectation that these enterprises would expand and offer further employment opportunities to our youth,” President Akufo-Addo said at the commissioning yesterday.
The K1TPP is the decommissioned Ameri Power Plant which had been relocated to Kumasi to provide stabile power to the middle and northern belt of the country.
The phase one of the plant has a capacity of 150 megawatts (MW). The President said the commissioning of the plant was a demonstration of the government’s quest to provide sustainable electricity for the entire nation.
He said the government was committed to delivering affordable and reliable electricity to drive the industrialisation agenda of the country and “to position Ghana to become a net exporter of electricity in the ECOWAS region”.
Currently, the President said, Ghana’s national electrification rate was around 88.8 per cent, one of the highest on the continent, adding “the goal is to have full electricity access by the end of this year”.
President Akufo-Addo commended the Volta River Authority (VRA) for decommissioning and reassembling the plant, using local expertise. “Indeed, it is a demonstration that Ghanaian engineers with publicly owned institutions can rise to the task of finding engineering solutions to build our nation.
“And to top it all, VRA provided all the funds for the construction of this station, including the land acquisition,” he added.
The Board Chairman of the VRA, owners of the plant, Kofi Tutu Agyare, expressed appreciation to the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, and the management of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) for releasing the land at Anwomaso for the project.
He said the establishment of the plant in the region would not only improve the system reliability and power quality, but will also become a pivotal infrastructure in the entire power system “as it would become the median point in the nation’s power transmission network”.
Mr Tutu Agyare explained that with VRA being the first to establish a power plant in that strategic location, “we are committed to supporting other institutions, including technical universities to develop additional infrastructure and skills that would turn this power enclave into a great engineering destination”.
