Dumsor halts proceedings in Ghana Parliament

Proceedings in Parliament was brought to an abrupt suspension on Wednesday morning when the lights went off suddenly at 1135 hours.

The members of parliament (MPs) who were bewildered, switched on the lighting system on their cecullar phones to peruse the Order Paper, the Votes and Proceedings Paper and other documentation laid before them in the chamber of the House.

The incident happened when the House was considering the approval of some loans for national development programmes during, which Mr Kwaku Agyeman Manu, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and MP for Dormaa Central was on his feet debating the nuances of government contracting too many loans.

Members on the Minority side began shouting “dumsor, dumsor, adumdum adumdum”  “in spite of all these plenty loans, Mahama cannot fix dumsor”.

The lights out plunged the chamber, the press and public gallery into partial darkness with rays of daylight filtering into the House from the towering windows of Parliament.

First Deputy Speaker, Mr Ebo Barton Odro who was chairing proceedings was forced to leave the chair in anticipation of the lights coming on soon.

Members of the House from both sides were seen holding tete-a-tete in hush-hush voices with one another.

However, sources close to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) indicated that the generator serving the chamber has been faulty for the past two weeks.

The source said the Speaker, Edward Doe Adjaho was livid over the development and queried the Development Manager of Parliament over the issue.

The GNA also learnt that apart from the main Chamber Block, other adjoining blocks had electricity supplied by a separate standby generator.

Source: GNA