Residents of several suburbs in Tamale in the Northern region of Ghana were living without power after an already ravaged Gridco substation in the metropolis was hit by a minor blast Thursday evening.

The blast destroyed some stressed power equipment at the control room of the substation that were installed to temporary evacuate power to customers following an earlier incident in November last year which has sparked a biting unstable power supply for many months in the city.

Public Relations Officer of NEDCo/VRA, Alhassan Abaaba said the blast destroyed a stand-alone switchgear at the substation, causing unannounced outage at over 20 areas.

The Tamale central business area, Zongo, Changli, Tishegu and their environs, West hospital, Part of Zogbeli, Part of Lamakara., St. Charles, Buglan Fong, Aboabo and their environs, all on feeder 2 and 11 respectively were the areas affected by the incident.

Abaaba, however, said a maintenance team had arrived on site to assess and fix the situation.

From January to February this year, the power situation worsened which compelled NEDCo to issue a statement of apology to consumers after some publicly complained that their businesses were crippling.