President John Dramani Mahama on Thursday paid a working visit to the fire-affected Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) electricity substation at Akosombo in the Eastern Region.

The fire incident led to the loss of over 1,000 megawatts from the national grid.

The President inspected ongoing restoration works and commended the engineers for their swift, professional response.

President Mahama said Government remains committed to restoring stable power supply and strengthening the resilience of Ghana’s energy infrastructure.

“We heard about the sad event, the fire outbreak in your control room. And of course, Ghanaians have felt the impact of what happened. You work hard, but it’s not surprising because the Volta River Authority (VRA) has been one of the best organized state-owned enterprises,” he said.

“So, I’m not surprised that you have the kind of quality of human resources to be able to ameliorate what happened.

“When I heard that our engineers say they’re going to find a way of bringing it back on, I wasn’t surprised because I know VRA has some of the best personnel you can ever get anywhere in the world.”

The President expressed his gratitude to the engineers for the sacrifice they had made towards fixing the situation.

“This is an act of God. I mean, who would have expected that the control room would develop this kind of fire? But of course, I hear it’s been there since 1964. So, they say an adversity is an opportunity,” he said.

“Now that this adversity has happened, it gives us an opportunity to replace it with a more modern control room that will serve this Akosombo plant and let it work for more generations yet unborn.”

President Mahama said Mr John Jinapor, the Minister of Energy and Green Transition had briefed him that the engineers have had four of the turbines back on.

He said, the Minister had given assurance that they were working on another miracle, and that was waiting for the good news soon with the remaining two turbines also coming back on.

“I want to thank you very much for what you’ve done, and we encourage you to continue to work.” President Mahama said.

“VRA will continue to be one of the foremost state-owned enterprises. GRIDCO and VRA are among the foremost. Twins of the same mother, GRIDCO and VRA,” he added.

He said, the staff and engineers of both companies would continue to work, and that every support government could give them; they would continue to do so.