Ghanaian pastors have added their voices to the worsening continuous electricity crisis in the country, saying it is burdening them with additional administrative cost to run the churches.

“There are many churches at the verge of collapse and the revenue in-flow can no longer meet the administrative cost. It is collapsing the churches and shifting our budget out of gear, but many can’t come out openly because they are afraid of being tagged as speaking against the ruling government,” Prophet Nicholas Osei, popularly known as Kumchacha, founder and leader of the Heaven’s Gate Ministries, told NEWS-ONE.

“Churches rely on electricity to do service because we play music instruments, we preach with public address systems, our church auditoriums use light bulbs, we even have a media team recording our sermons, but we end up using the offering to buy diesel to power our generators because of the constant dumsor and the cost of diesel is no joke. At the end of the month, the ECG guys bring the huge light bills anyway as if we never had dumsor at all. This is expensive, we cannot sustain it and it must stop,” Kumchacha explained.

He said almost all businesses are complaining that the electricity crisis has eaten into their finances, and this is making church payers pay less money as offering and tithes because their income levels have gone down.

The prophet explained further that, many of the churches have already paid expensive amounts for airtime on radio and television, but the money is going waste because by the time their sermons would be broadcast, more than half of the television and radio audience do not have electricity to listen to the sermon.

“If the message is supposed to reach 10 people, eight of them do not have lights because of dumsor. But the radio and television stations would not say that because of dumsor few people listened so they would reduce the cost of the airtime. No. This is affecting the work of God and the persons in-charge of our electricity should come out and tell us what exactly he problem is.

“It is as if for the last four years, the people managing our electricity keep making promises and failing us. Our ministers keep promising and failing as if they have no solution to the crisis, but are afraid to say they need help. They need deliverance because everything that happens in the flesh has a spiritual side.

“There are many many pastors who are facing this problem and dumsor is affecting their work but they cannot speak out because they are afraid of being tagged with politics. But as for me, I would say it because I believe in leadership of competence and accountability, not a leadership of promise and fail. What is wrong is wrong no matter who is in-charge of our government and we cannot pretend dumsor is not affecting our economy to an extent that even missionary work is suffering,” Kumchacha added.