Recent disclosure made by the Communications and Community Relations Manager of the Electricity Distribution and Supply Authority (EDSA), Sarh Nepor in connection with the Turkish Karpowership that the hydro power ship has reached its Waterloo. The PRO said the ESDA management requested the ship to seize its supply of electricity.
To avoid electricity wastage, EDSA requested the Karpowership management to reduce its supply for now and if the need be, they will be recalled to continue with the supply of electricity.
Rumours making the rounds have it that the Karpowership since last Friday has shut down operations on unconfirmed allegation of government failure to pay millions of dollars to the Karpowership management.
‘The Karpowership is still in operation, just that we are now taking minimal rate of electricity from the ship because we have other interventions in country’, clarified the EDSA PRO.
Nepor furthered that the country is in the season when it can fully generate electricity supply from the Bumbuna Hydro electricity dam, the Cote d’lvoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Electricity Networks Interconnection Project and a standby thermal plant at the Blackhall Road substation, which are all cost effective.
The uncertainty expressed by the ESDA Communications and Community Relations Manager seems as a quit signal that the Karpowership’s time in Sierra Leone is gradually ticking to the end of the road.
With the appreciable number of years the Karpowership had stayed in the country stands remarkable considering its intervention in the energy sector that has leapfrog the country from been the darkest city under the sun will continues to linger in the minds of well-meaning citizens.
It could be recalled that in June 2018, Karpowership signed a contract with the Sierra Leone national utility company, EDSA, Ministries of Energy and Finance to deploy a power ship for the supply of thirty megawatt (30MW), which was followed by an addendum agreement also in 2018 to increase the capacity to fifty megawatt (50MW).
A third addendum was signed in 2020 to increase the capacity to sixty-five megawatt (65MW).
Since 2018 to date the Turkish Karpowership has been supplying eighty per cent (80%) of the country’s total electricity needs.
