The Volta River Authority (VRA) says the Energy Ministry’s assurances that the ongoing load shedding exercise will end by next week are not true.

Edward Bawa, a communications consultant at the Energy Ministry, told Joy News earlier this week that the current load shedding regime was as a result of a shortage of crude oil, adding that with an influx of crude oil, the exercise would end in the coming days.

However, the news about the long awaited end of the load shedding exercise was short-lived as Sam Fletcher, Head of Corporate Communications at VRA, announced that beyond the unavailability of crude, the blackouts are also due to a lack of a power reserves and the authority’s poor financial state.

According to him, the country should brace itself for more of what has come to be known in local parlance as “dum sor, dum sor”, to wit, an unreliable power supply.

He was hopeful that certain other measures being put in place would significantly reduce the frequency of power outages by April 2013.