Tema Port Crisis: 2,000 ECG Containers Retrieved but 283 Remain Unaccounted For.

The Ministry of Energy and Green Transition has managed to retrieve nearly 2000 containers belonging to the Electricity Company of Ghana from the ports, despite 283 items being misplaced.

Deputy Energy Minister Richard Gyan-Mensah announced the findings on Friday, 16th October 2026, indicating the problems that the ECG containers faced since being held during the 2025 energy audit. The Energy Minister stated that the last of the missing 2760 containers was retrieved from the local ports after his officials received complaints that they were not traced.******

According to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) research, Gyan-Mensah stated that the ECG containers were removed from the harbor because they stayed too long and had accrued substantial demurrage. The ECG management claims that they had transferred the complete case of the missing containers to the Energy Ministry to enable them to monitor and trace the items from various harbors.

The containers retrieved from ECG were misplaced, and the Ministry received them to store them in the Energy Department and ECG warehouse. The Multi- Agency Task Force investigating the whereabouts of the missing ECG containers has faced enormous challenges identifying the 283 boxes that were still missing. The task force suspected that the containers were scattered in the many harbors, and the government investigators are currently analyzing the port and customs records.

Gyan- Mensah revealed that initially, the container searchers retrieved up to 50 items daily, but due to hindrances, the search operation had slowed down to two containers a day. In some instances, the operation of tracing misplaced containers stalled for the entire week. The Energy Ministry task force meets on a Monday to deliberate on the appropriate strategy to adopt in tracing the missing ECG containers. The meeting consists of the National Security, Ministry of Finance, Ghana Revenue Authority, and the ports’ representatives.

The containers that the ECG reported missing were among the many valuable items that the energy department reported stolen from the Tema Port. In April 2025, after a public outcry of the country’s security issues, Prof. Innocent Senyo Acquah, the committee chairman, conducted an audit on the energy ministries to discover the cause of the missing 2761 containers. The audit results indicated that over 1300 of ECG’s 2491 uncleared containers at the ports were unaccounted for, and the ECG board had a suspended weekly clearing fee.

The problems that ECG faced with the clearing of its containers at the ports have caused serious questions to be asked in the parliamentary committees. ECG’s containers are suspected to be smuggled from the Tema ports to other countries illegally, and the police are investigating the matter. The port and customs officials at the Tema, Takoradi, and the Moomba ports have been scrutinizing each other’s documents to identify the party responsible for the missing and misplaced containers.

The Ministry of Energy and Green transition has been asked to expedite the process and submit a final report on the misplaced and missing containers within the month. The final report will highlight all the containers retrieved from the ports and the ones that the ECG reported stolen from the warehouses. Gyan- Mensah informed the Public Accounts Committee that they would ensure that due legal procedures are followed before the clearance of the ECG supplies.