Lawyer George Agyekum, a private legal practitioner, has recommended that VRA and GRIDCo engineers and technicians who rose to the challenge of the devastating fire incident at GRIDCo’s Akosombo switchyard on April 23, 2026 be adequately compensated.
“The government needs to reward these persons with some honorarium” he said in an interview with The Chronicle noting that it is not enough to be praised to work and sacrifice for Ghana.
The Konongo-based legal brain emphasised that Cash rewards is a good incentive for patriotism.
He explained that foreign consultants and engineers would have charged us (Ghana) millions of dollars and still the job may not even have been fully done or completed.
Lawyer Agyekum said during the PNDC era, hundreds of cadres and patriots made what he called “Revolutionary sacrifices” in many roles for this country and ended up as paupers to the extent that some even couldn’t fend for their children.
According to him, this should be a thing of the past and that in the instant matter people who work with dedication and sacrifice should be rewarded adequately explaining that there is no different market for patriots. Patriots patronise same market and pay same price for goods, services, food and rent just as any other Ghanaian, he stressed.
The concerned lawyer cited the case of footballers and boxers who won coveted trophies for Ghana, but promises of rewards were not fulfilled.
The April 23 fire disaster destroyed the switchyard control room, making it difficult to dispatch the entire 1,020MW installed capacity of the Akosombo Generating Station (AGS) to GRIDCo.
According to reports, the incident destroyed all switches, control, protection, monitoring and communication systems in the control room, cutting off the entire 1,020MW Akosombo Power Plant from the national grid. Though the generating units at AGS remained fully operational, the pathway for the control of transmitting power to homes, industries, and businesses nationwide was lost.
The ensuing situation meant that about 25 per cent of Ghana’s average national electricity demand was suddenly unavailable and Ghana faced the grim prospect of prolonged load shedding, widespread power instability, and significant economic disruption as Ghana’s largest power producer had effectively been stalled.
In their moments of desperation, VRA and GRIDCo engineers and technicians rose to the challenge and demonstrated exceptional Ghanaian engineering excellence, resilience, and innovation by jointly designing an innovative bypass solution instead of waiting for months for a conventional rebuild.
By their efforts, new power and control cables were routed through cable trenches, directly connecting the Akosombo Generating Station to the switchyard, while completely bypassing the destroyed control room as well as re-engineering the transmission configuration of the switchyard to supply the load centres directly.
Lawyer Agyemkum noted that the joint VRA-GRIDCo team meticulously reviewed, redesigned, and remapped the entire protection and control scheme ensuring that the safety, reliability, and stability of both the generating plant and the national grid were fully maintained.
Reports further indicated that while reconstruction of a permanent switchyard control centre is expected to take a minimum of six months to implement, all six generating units were successfully connected to the grid within six days, completing the entire interim restoration effort on April 30, 2026 just seven days after the fire incident.
It is for this bold engineering intervention, which averted months of power rationing and prevented massive economic losses that typically accompany prolonged energy shortages and saving millions of cedis in emergency power procurement and preserved industrial productivity nationwide.
It is upon the basis of this that the senior advocate and Legal Consultant is recommending to the government to consider a compensation package for the VRA and GRIDCo engineers, technicians, and support staff who worked tirelessly through sleepless nights to design and execute this exceptional solution.
“Their dedication, brilliance, and unwavering commitment go beyond mere sacrifice. This is an act of patriotism and must be recognised,” Lawyer Agyekum said. He contended that their efforts restored power, safeguarded grid stability, and reaffirmed the resilience of Ghana’s power sector in the face of severe adversity.
His position on the compensation, based on reports which he is privy to, is also premised on the fact that the absence of Akosombo would have deprived the grid of critical ancillary services, including voltage support, grid frequency regulation, and black-start capability (ability to restart power plant with external electricity) making the national grid significantly more fragile.
It is for these shared views that Lawyer Agyekum says his recommendation is worth considering because delays in restoring AGS could have triggered the shutdown of Kpong Generating Station, which relies on regulated downstream water releases from Akosombo, which situation could have resulted in an additional loss of 160MW of installed capacity.
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