Minister for Energy and Green Transitions, John Abdulai Jinapor, says plans are underway to operationalise a control and command centre aimed at improving response time to power-related challenges across Ghana.
The initiative, being implemented in partnership with the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), is part of broader efforts to enhance efficiency and service delivery in the energy sector.
The centre is expected to harness modern technology to strengthen monitoring and coordination through several communication channels, including short code, phone line and social media platforms.
Speaking during a visit to the Ashanti regional unit of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) on Friday, May 8, 2026, the sector minister was positive the centre would facilitate easier reporting of faults and service disruptions with increased response time.
“In the age of modern technology, you can also use technology to monitor. So we are setting up a full command and control centre under the auspices of the Ministry of Energy, the Energy Commission and the PURC. We’ve already set it up; we are just operationalising it,” he said.
Under the new communication initiative, district managers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will be provided with new mobile phones and dedicated contact lines to improve communication and response times.
Mr. Jinapor noted that the system will go beyond reporting outages but also help augment the overall management of the power distribution sector.
“If there is a problem, and sometimes transformers can develop problems, even in the most advanced countries, they do have problems. But the first question is, what is the response time? Why should somebody complain that for two days, he’s been calling a so-called district office and nobody’s coming?” he asked.
The sector minister believes that with improved communication and response to reported faults in the system, the power sector could generate more revenue.
He observed that delays in tending to disruptions in power supply are a means of the power distributor losing out on revenue generation.
“Those two days that you are not supplying power, you are losing revenue. I mean, that’s how I see it. It’s not even the energy alone. Apart from the inconvenience, apart from the passion that the government receives, you lose revenue when you don’t supply the power,” he said.
Mr. Jinapor also revealed that all new transformers being installed across the country will be tracked on a digital system.
This, he says, will address concerns over power infrastructure that could go missing.
“So that centre is not just for outages; it’s for general management, all the transformers we are installing, we want to track them one after the other. Everywhere we install transformers, it will be logged into that system; it will be made public so that the people in that area will know that, indeed, a transformer has been installed,” he said.