Kumasi traders, residents hold night-time 'dumsor' demo

Dumsor refers to scheduled power outages

Hundreds of protesters marched against power supply challenges in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi.

The April 17, 2024 march was held in the evening with protesters holding placards with messages that expressed their frustration at the erratic power supply and frequent unannounced blackouts, popularly referred to as 'dumsor.'

Photos and videos shared by local news outlets showed the sizeable crowd marching through the streets of Kumasi, some holding lanterns and candles.

The protest is significant to the effect that it took place in the stronghold of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

"The protest dubbed "dumsor vigil” is to express their displeasure and urge government to address the root causes of the power issues and take swift action.

"Some traders expressed concerns over how recent power cuts have impacted their businesses," Accra-based Citi FM captioned its photos from the protest on social media.

The power distributor, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has in the past few months come under sustained pressure to publish a load-shedding timetable.

They have refused to do so stating that outages being experienced were as a result of overloaded transformers.

That claim has been dismissed by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) which insisted that ECG's outages amounted to a load-shedding programme that they failed to duly inform the public about.

PURC subsequently slapped a fine on board members of ECG.

Watch videos, photos of the dumsor march below: