Wa, UWR – April 19, 2026
For four straight days, offices at Block B of the Upper West Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) in Wa have been without electricity, crippling work and leaving staff to operate in the dark.

Checks on Saturday morning showed all prepaid and postpaid meters serving the block were completely off. Screens were blank. The outage has halted computer-based work, stalled printing of official documents, and forced departments to turn away members of the public seeking services.
A civil servant who asked not to be named said,
“It’s been four days now. No lights, no fans, no computers. We’re just sitting here,” “This is the Regional Coordinating Council, the highest office of government in the Upper West Region. If we have no power, how do we work effectively.

Staff say formal complaints were made to the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) Upper West office as soon as the blackout began. Follow-up calls to the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) have also been made. As of today, no technical team has visited Block B of the RCC and no explanation has been given for the outage.

“The authority looks adamant,” one departmental head said (name withheld). “We reported to PURC because NEDCo wasn’t responding. But four days on, there’s still silence. All the NEDCo meters are dead, so it’s not even an internal wiring issue. Power is just not coming to the block.”
Block B houses several key units like the state Attorney, the District Court, NYA, Department of Gender, the Tourism Authority etc. that coordinate municipal and district activities across the Upper West Region. With no power, officers cannot process memos, print letters to the districts, or access digital files. Air conditioners and fans are off in the 38°C Wa heat, making the offices difficult to use past mid-morning.

Visitors from other districts who arrived to work on their documents this week were turned back.
The prolonged outage at the RCC BLk B has raised concerns about responsiveness to public institutions. “If the RCC BLk B can be off for four days with no answers, it tells you how complaints from ordinary households are treated,” said a Wa resident who was at the block to follow up on his documents.
The PURC is mandated to ensure that utilities provide reasonable service and to intervene when consumers report failures. Staff at Block B say they are yet to see that intervention.
For now, Block B of the RCC remains in the dark, waiting.

Report file by Binne Daniel
Joy News Wa
Upper West Region.