The latest Africa Power Pool Project (WAPP) forthwith at its phase of Commissioning and Vitality Ing. Paul Charles Saffa publicized

By Abdul Rahman Bangura–

Photo Credit: Industry

NEW AFRICA BUSINESS NEWS (NABN) Freetown, Sierra Leone- An official of the long awaited West Africa Power Pool Project (WAPP) has told Politico that the project is currently at its commissioning and energization stage of the lines which are currently in Liberia, a neighboring Mano Rover Union (MRU) country.

Sources from the Project Engineer in charge – Paul Charles Saffa says that they have already begun providing energy to the substations in some parts of Cote’d’Ivore and that they are now proceeding to Liberia. Work is predicted to arrive in Sierra Leone through Kenema in July of 2021.

Engineer Saffa let out, the project installation and energization could not reach Sierra Leone at the last scheduled 40 days timeline which was confirmed because he said they had issues with installations while working in Cote’ d’Ivoire because of a defaulting factory error.

“The thing about commissioning is that it’s the last stage from which you give green wave to the project. So you don’t want a situation wherein you jump over any safety protocol. So any safety protocol that did not pass the test, we have to do everything over and again until we are 100% certain for reliability and stability because we don’t want a system and after five days, it shuts down, no we don’t want that. The commissioning is a very painstaking job. So that delayed us a bit,” he noted.

He remarked that, this linked with the evidence that most of the global experts they had hired from India and China relinquished from the contract for fear of travel during the current Novel Coronavirus (COVID) pandemic that still destroys some parts of the world, similarly negatively impacted the project’s preliminary culmination date which has
resulted he said in them now having to begin glancing for experts in the field from West Africa to do the job.

He said the line is 1,500 Kilometer long and that by the time it enters in Sierra Leone, they will be in Kenema which means that power will be available at the Kenema substation making Bo and Kenema to be powered.

“Kenema to Kono and Bumbuna will take another one month which will be in August which means in August ending, Kono substation and its environs would have been powered. So from the substation to Bumbuna is another one month which means that in September, we would send power to Freetown from Bumbuna or to Makeni or Magburaka and all the areas connected to the Bumbuna line. So that’s our new timeline because of the prevailing circumstances that we have,” he asserted.

He ensured that the project will match up to this new timeline because he said it’s now in its actuality stage, meaning they have discovered numerous lessons and passed almost all the obstacles.

The undertaking is strived at giving electricity to the four MRU countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’ Ivoire and Guinea. When finished, it will bring dependable and accessible electricity to the country which had yearly dilemmas with electricity, particularly outside the capital cities.

For New Africa Business News (NABN) Abdul Rahman Bangura Reports,  Africa Correspondent